Ehud Barak - a leader Israelis love to hate

The billboards around the country show a composed looking Ehud Barak flanked by mildly derogatory slogans - 'He's not nice', 'He's not your buddy', or 'He's not trendy'. All, however, end with the same phrase: 'But he's a leader.'

Rated in the polls a poor third among candidates for prime minister in next month's national elections, Mr Barak and his publicists fell back last month on self-mockery in a desperate bid to signal to the voters that he was human enough to laugh at himself. That desperation appeared to reach its nadir last week when Mr Barak, a former prime minister and a war hero, showed up on a popular satirical television show, A Wonderful Country, to take part in a skit in which he tries to sell his multimillion-dollar Tel Aviv apartment - a real-life albatross for Mr Barak as leader of the Labour Party - and then is rejected by the residents' committee when he attempts to move into an ordinary apartment building because he is not nice enough.

That skit, shown a few days before Israel's surprise attack on Gaza, may prove a turning point in Mr Barak's political fortunes. It was revealed this week that his appearance was part of an elaborate feint, of Mr Barak's devising, aimed at lulling Hamas into thinking that an Israeli strike was not imminent. If Israel's defence minister was engaged in such nonsense, war did not seem close.

In a poll taken three days after Israel's opening air attack a week ago, the Labour Party increased its projected seats in the 120-seat Knesset from 10 to 16 as voters tipped their hats to Mr Barak. Political commentators, who had written off his return to the prime minister's office, now give him a good chance if the Gaza campaign turns out well.

Mr Barak is a political anomaly - a highly intelligent figure with degrees in physics and in economic engineering systems from Stanford - and a commando extraordinaire, Israel's most highly decorated soldier. Despite these attributes, however, a political commentator last year called him 'the most hated politician in the country'.

It is not clear why.

'There is some sort of transparent barrier between me and the public,' Mr Barak said in an interview in the newspaper Haaretz last month. 'Life placed me on the ultimate track of getting things done under conditions of total uncertainty and high risk. In those places you do not look for love. Perhaps you do not give love either.'