(1942- ) A Jewish Israeli military and political figure. Barak joined the Israeli army in 1959, reaching the position of Lt. General - the highest rank of the Israeli military - in 1991. As Lt. General, he was involved in Israel’s peace treaty with Jordan in 1994 as well as meetings with his Syrian counterpart during Syrian-Israeli negotiations around the same time. As member of the Labor party, Barak entered politics in 1995 and first served as Minister of the Interior and then Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1995-1996. He was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1999 and participated in the Camp David II Talks with the Palestinian Authority. Barak left politics for a few years after the Likud party’s Ariel Sharon defeated him in special prime ministerial elections in February 2001. In June 2007, he won the Labor primaries and became Defense Minister. He has continued in that post ever since, breaking away from the Labor party in 2011, along with four other Labor party ministers, to form the Independence party and keep the  Likud-led government from breaking apart. See Kumaraswamy, P.R. “Barak, Ehud.” Historical Dictionary of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, 2006; ”Ehud Barak.” Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 17 June 2011. http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2001/3/Ehud+Barak.htm; and “Ehud Barak quits Israel’s Labour to form new party.” BBC. 17 January 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12204321.  http://www.justvision.org/glossary/barak-ehud