If I were an Israeli, I would not have voted for either Binyamin Netanyahu or Ehud Barak. Each already had their chance at the prime minister's job and failed.

In the late 1990s, the electorate chose first Netanyahu and then Barak, and then, having watched their performance in office, quickly sent them packing. The two were the shortest serving elected prime ministers in Israel's history.

It is amazing that either one is given a second chance, but there is nothing intrinsically wrong with second chances. Politicians, like anyone else, are capable of surprising second acts. It is hard to imagine, however, that either of them is likely to stray very far from their respective past histories. Netanyahu will be sixty in a few months; Barak is sixty-seven. By now, each surely is who is he going to be.

Nonetheless, I am glad that Netanyahu and Barak have joined forces in the new government. To Netanyahu's credit, he did not want to lead a far right coalition, dominated by religious fanatics, extreme nationalists, and bigots.
This is not to say that Netanyahu himself is not a man of the right but only that he is utterly secular, modern, and not much of a Greater Israel type. As prime minister, he actually yielded territory to the Palestinians, which is something the man who defeated him in 1999, Ehud Barak, never did.

Essentially, Netanyahu is an opportunist. He wants to be prime minister, but he does not want to lead a government that would, almost surely, produce a major clash with President Barack Obama. His number one goal is significant economic growth that, surely he must grasp, cannot be achieved in a state of endless war.

Ehud Barak is also an opportunist. He is even less of a "party man" than Netanyahu. Back in the 1990s, he even changed the name of his party from Labor to "One Israel." Labor sounded too socialist for Barak, who is by no stretch of the imagination any kind of left-winger. For him, the Labor Party is only a personal vehicle to power. Beyond that, he has no use for it.

So it was inevitable that Barak would try to join Netanyahu's government. Outside of government, he's a has-been. Inside, as minister of defense, he is the number two man in the country, maybe even one-and-a-half. For a man who essentially exists to hold power, being a minor player in the opposition (which will be led by Kadima's Tzipi Livni) is inconceivable.

And, just possibly, there is another reason Barak joined the coalition. Maybe part of the reason he is going in is because saving Israel from the far right is the right thing to do. After all, to win Barak over, Netanyahu had to promise to commit his government to continuing the peace process and keeping the two-state solution alive. He also had to agree not to cut government aid to Israel's most needy (a Netanyahu specialty in the past).

Without Barak, with just nationalists and religious zealots at his side, Netanyahu would have had no choice but to pour state revenues into yeshivas, expand settlements, recommit to Greater Israel, and kill the "two-state" idea. Any moves to liberalize laws on marriage, minority rights, or the role of religion would have had to be shelved as Israel's rabbinic equivalents to Iran's more extreme mullahs made their demands known.

Now he can tell the extremists to back off. If he says "no" to snatching more Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem or imposing more misery on the Arabs of Hebron, he can remind the right that he made certain promises to Barak. If he backs down, as he must on the incendiary plan to build in East Jerusalem's so-called E-1 corridor, which would effectively divide the West Bank into two cantons that almost totally block Palestinian freedom of movement from north to south, he can blame Barak and his partners in Labor.

The other Barak, Barack Obama, will also do his part to limit Netanyahu's freedom of movement. At his press conference this week, Obama said that there is no alternative to the two-state solution and that the status quo is unacceptable.

That is also what Netanyahu's defense minister, who heads a now vital faction in his coalition, will be telling him.

I don't know what Netanyahu believes about Israel's borders. In his heart, he may be a real settlement man. But with Barack and Barak each pressing from the left, Bibi's inner right-winger will hopefully be thoroughly suppressed.

My hope is that Barak (and Barack) will hold Netanyahu's feet to the fire and push him toward an agreement with the Palestinians whether he wants to or not. But that it is pretty "iffy" I'll admit. Neither Barak or Netanyahu seem ready to break out of the box which assumes that Israeli superiority (military and otherwise) is as natural as the sun rise. Each treats Arabs in the high-handed manner of 19th century colonialists; for them, peace and security for Palestinians is a gift they can either bestow or (usually) not.

But Obama knows this and he also knows that he -- not the Israelis -- holds all the cards. Even the "pro-Israel" lobby is unenthusiastic about the new Israeli government and fearful of taking on a popular President on its behalf especially when it knows that it would lose. (American Jews, certainly, will never choose Netanyahu -- about whom they are, at best, ambivalent -- over their own new President whom they adore).

But do Netanyahu and Barak know this? Or are they joining forces to double team President Obama on Iran, with Netanyahu thinking that Barak has a better chance to strong arm Obama (or sweet talk him) on that subject? Remember, for the Israeli establishment, the Palestinians, settlements and the rest are side issues. Iran is the ball game. They will give up a lot to get an American green light on Iran.

But they won't get one. President Obama's groundbreaking message to Iran last week was a strong sign that he has no intention of leading or permitting an attack on Iran. (Obama was neither surprised nor disheartened by the seeming rebuff from the mullahs; his move was a first step and nothing about the Iranian response indicated that further overtures will not be welcomed).

There is also the possibility that Netanyahu and Barak have agreed to try one more war against the Palestinians in Gaza. After all, Barak was the architect of that last blunder while Netanyahu cheered for further escalation from the sidelines. They might decide on another drink from that bottle only to discover that together they could beat their own personal best records for shortest terms ever.

After all, Israel's most popular politician, Tzipi Livni -- determined to wrap up an Israeli-Palestinian deal -- is waiting in the wings. Surely, these two scarred veterans of Israel's political wars are not going to hand it all to her by going to war with the Palestinians again. Again, they might.

Still, we're all better off with Barak in than Barak out. A Netanyahu pushed only from and to the right is a scary thought, obviously to him as well as to us.