The Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, has announced he will quit politics after the general election next January.
Mr Barak, who was Israel’s prime minister between 1999 and 2001, said he would now concentrate on his personal life.
“I want to study, to write, to live and have a good time,” he told reporters.
Mr Barak said he would remain as defence minister until a new government is formed.
The decision brings an end to a 53-year career in Israel’s military and political establishment.
Ehud Barak served in the Israel Defense Forces for 39 years, rising to become the Chief of General Staff for four years from 1991 to 1995.
He served with distinction in the 1973 Middle East war and oversaw two daring operations to free Israeli hostages on hijacked planes.
Mr Barak led the 1972 operation against Palestinian militants from the Black September group who had seized a Sabena flight and forced it to land at Lod (now Ben Gurion) airport, in Israel.
Dressed as a ground technician, he convinced the hijackers the plane needed repairing and quickly overpowered them, killing two men and capturing two women. A second future prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, served under Mr Barak on that raid.
Ehud Barak was one of the architects of Israel’s famous raid on Entebbe in 1976Four years later, Mr Barak was one of the architects of the raid on Entebbe airport in Uganda to rescue another plane of Israelis also being held hostage by Black September.
Some two decades later, as Chief of General Staff, he implemented the Israel-Palestinian Oslo peace accords and participated in peace talks with Jordan.
On his resignation from the military, Mr Barak joined the Labour-led government of Yitzhak Rabin as interior minister. After Rabin’s assassination in 1995, he served as foreign minister in the government of Shimon Peres until its fall in 1996.
Mr Barak was elected leader of the Labour party and defeated Benjamin Netanyahu in the 1999 general election on a manifesto which included the promise to withdraw from southern Lebanon.
He made good on that pledge in 2000 and also held detailed negotiations on final status issues with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, but his government collapsed in 2001 and he lost power to Ariel Sharon’s Likud party.
Mr Barak returned to frontline politics in 2007 when he regained the leadership of the Labour party and joined Ehud Olmert’s ruling coalition as defence minister. He has held that post for the past five years, despite leaving Labour to form his own Independence party.
Mr Barak said he had been considering his decision for the past few weeks and said he would now spend more time with his family, despite polls showing a growth in support for his party following Israel’s Gaza offensive this month.
(BBC)
