EHUD BARAK, a chubby-featured former army chief who portrays himself as the natural successor to the assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, scored an easy victory last night in a contest for the leadership of Israel's moderate opposition Labour Party. But he will have a much tougher time trying to unseat the hardline Likud Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mr Barak, whose exploits in a series of hostage rescues and attacks on Palestinian guerrilla leaders made him Israel's most decorated soldier, entered politics to serve briefly as a minister in the last Labour governments led by Mr Rabin and by Shimon Peres.
Like Mr Rabin, he has taken a cautious stance on peacemaking with the Palestinians and the Syrians, supporting the land-for-peace equation while laying great stress on Israel's security requirements.
His main argument, in the battle against three other candidates to succeed the retiring Mr Peres as Labour leader, was that only he had the security credentials and wide-ranging appeal to defeat the hardline Mr Netanyahu in general elections scheduled for the year 2000.
But although that view was supported by Mr Rabin's widow, Leab, who endorsed his candidacy, his critics have derided Mr Barak as a "Netanyahu clone", and the prime minister has appeared singularly untroubled by the leadership vote, quipping yesterday that he hoped Labour would choose a leader to guide it in opposition for many years to come.
Mr Netanyahu's confidence may be well-founded. Mr Peres was defeated by Mr Netanyahu in the last elections, a year ago, in great part because working-class and Orthodox Israelis have become disillusioned by Labour's elitist and anti-religious image; Mr Barak, secular and upper-middle class, is not especially well-placed to retrieve those votes.
Only one of the candidates, Mr Shlomo Ben-Ami, came from the Sephardi working-class constituency to which Labour needs to appeal if it is to win back power. Moroccan-born, Mr Ben-Ami, pulled himself up from humble immigrant roots to become an outstanding academic and Israel's ambassador to Spain.
Initially seen as a no-hope contender, he impressed many of Labour's 167,000 voters in this campaign, and Mr Barak will probably recognise the voter value of giving him a high-profile role in the party hierarchy.
The final vote count, ushering in the start of the Barak era in Labour, also marks the end of Mr Peres's half-century of political activism.
Although Mr Peres insists he is not retiring, he failed last month to persuade party members to make him their president.
Sadly true to form, Mr Peres, who failed five times to win the prime ministership outright, was working behind the scenes in this campaign for Mr Yossi Beilin, the man who came in in second place to Mr Barak.