Ammon News - Al Jazeera And Agencies

Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, says he is leaving politics and will not run in January elections.
Al Jazeera's Tom Ackerman, reporting from Jerusalem on Monday, said there were doubts that Barak's Atzmaut (Independence) party would survive the next election.

Most opinion polls showed the party not clearing the threshold to win any seats in the Knesset, or parliament. So it is quite likely that Barak resigned now in order to save face, analysists say.

Barak oversaw the Labour party's decline from 19 seats to 13 in the Knesset under his leadership.

He faced criticism for bringing the left-leaning Labour into Binyamin Netanyahu's conservative cabinet after the last election, a move that granted him a political future as defence minister.

Last year, Barak broke away from Labour, taking with him four Knesset members to form Atzmaut.

However, the question of him leaving politics has arisen before, way back in 2000, Al Jazeera's Ackerman said, adding that it is not out of the question that he will come back.