Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the move had been decided in advance, before the US statement.
Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the minister of trade, once Mr Barak's strongest backer, is urging Labour to set a deadline.
ECONOMIST: Israel��s ruling coalition faces more dissent from within
The street-smart Labour Party leader and minister of defence, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, was quick to read the new reality.
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Amram Mitzna, the mayor of Haifa, is presently ahead of Mr Ben-Eliezer in the opinion polls, with Mr Ramon trailing.
Mr Ben-Eliezer is understood to have ordered members of the general staff to stop giving interviews for the time being.
Ben-Eliezer urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resume talks with the Palestinians.
Mr Ben-Eliezer, who is also the leader of the Labour Party, says that he is pleased with the way the agreement is working in Bethlehem.
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But the popular response to the unilateralist thesis enunciated by such senior figures as Haim Ramon and Shlomo Ben-Ami was too strong for Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the party's chairman, to withstand.
The outspoken and doveish Mr Mitzna, a former army general and the mayor of Haifa for the past eight years, trounced his party boss, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, in Labour's leadership race earlier this month.
This ties in with the admission by Israel's defence minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, two weeks ago that he had given field commanders (even junior commanders) blanket approval in principle to carry out incursions into areas in the West Bank and Gaza that are fully under Palestinian control.
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