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Barak, the 57-year-old career warrior against Israel's Arab neighbors, has tilted in the direction of peace, despite some concerns that he was "Bibi-compatible" -- reciting moderate rhetoric but in fact sharing Netanyahu's hard-line stance on the peace process.

Vestiges of that concern were still echoed by Palestinian negotiators after Barak and Mubarak exchanged a warm handshake amid the snapping flashbulbs in Alexandria Friday. "What we heard from Barak at the press conference was more music than words," Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath told the Associated Press. "We want to see him starting the peace process with implementation of Wye, and a real cessation of settlement activity."

But among his supporters in Israel and among Western leaders, the meetings this weekend mark a dramatic turnaround from the Netanyahu era. In his first steps as prime minister, and in the formation of his ruling coalition, Barak has sent a clear message that peace is once again at the top of the Israeli political agenda.

The key clue comes from Barak's decision to include the ultra-religious, but relatively dovish Shas party in his coalition instead of the Likud. After the aged hawk Ariel Sharon, who succeeded Netanyahu as Likud leader, demanded control of the peace process, Barak turned him down and went with Shas.

Shas, an ultra-religious Sephardic (Middle Eastern Jewish) party, is by far the fastest-growing political party in Israel. It grew from 10 to 17 Knesset seats (out of 120) in the last election, putting it just behind Likud (19 seats and falling) as the third-largest party in Israel.

Shas is dovish almost solely because its founder, spiritual leader and all-powerful decision maker, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, believes that the Torah requires that parts of the holy land of Israel be sacrificed if this will save Jewish lives. While Shas follows Yosef's dictates, most of its supporters -- many of whom are religious, but less so than the Shas leadership -- tend to be more nationalistic and less willing to give up land.

Unlike other religious parties, Shas is not involved in sending Israeli settlers into controversial new Israeli housing projects in the West Bank. United Torah Judaism, an ultra-religious Ashkenazic (European Jewish) party, is also in the government, and has loose but growing ties to the settlements. Its policy on the peace process tends to be hawkish, but not automatically so.

The party that, more than any other, represents the settlers is the National Religious Party. It has also joined the Barak government -- mainly to safeguard, to whatever extent it can, the settlements' welfare. The NRP is against giving up any land, but it also recognizes that a large majority of the Israeli public wants the peace process to continue, so it has become increasingly pragmatic. If Barak gets to the point where he's making extensive concessions of land to the Palestinians and Syrians, the NRP is likely to leave the government. UJT might also leave. Shas, however, is a good bet to stay -- because of both its dovishness and its abject dependence on government money to finance its social and educational network in Israel's slums, from which the party draws most of its support. As the largest of the three religious parties, Shas is the most important to Barak. If Shas leaves, Barak would probably have to reach out to Likud to keep his government from crumbling.

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