It is a measure of the scale of the deterioration that today, while Israel votes, the 3.5 million Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza will be locked tightly inside their cities by the Israeli army.In particular, this support for peace was eaten away by several horrific headline-grabbing moments: the lynching of two Israeli soldiers by a Palestinian mob in Ramallah; the killing of a 16-year-old boy, apparently lured to the West Bank by an Internet temptress, and the shooting of two Tel Aviv restaurateurs who went shopping for plant pots on the wrong side of the 1967 Green Line.Since the beginning of the uprising last September, 50 Israeli Jews have died. And although Mr Barak used tanks against the Palestinians' cities, assassinated their suspected leaders, throttled the occupied territories with economic blockades, bulldozed farms, and let Israeli troops shoot dead hundreds of young rioters, he could not stop the uprising. His attempts to crack down on the Palestinians on one hand, while negotiating on the other, only deepened the Israeli public's disillusionment.We will find out today if Mr Barak has also lost the faith of several individual components within Israel's diverse and deeply divided electorate. Certainly, a proportion of Israel's 504,000 Arab voters will carry out their threat to boycott the election in protest over the killing of 13 Israeli Arabs by police at the start of the intifada.Israel's large community of immigrants from the old Soviet Union have voted against the incumbents in the past three elections, and are credited with supporting the winner each time Surveys indicate they back Ariel Sharon by two to one.

The Likud leader is helped by the fact the 1 million Soviet immigrants were not in Israel to see him disgraced in the Lebanon war in 1982. By contrast, they have been directly effected by the intifada, which has claimed several of their number.Even if Mr Barak confounds the pundits and pulls off a victory today, no one will dispute that he has been lacking in fundamental political skills. He failed to build and nurse a solid coalition in the Knesset on which to found his government. This is astonishingly difficult with the current parliament, not least because nearly half its 120 members belong to parties with 10 seats or fewer. But his high-handed manner and his persistent refusal to delegate or consult did not help him Last summer his coalition fell apart altogether. Nor did he do himself much good with his efforts to save it by giving in to the demands of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party Secular Israelis were not pleased.

This time around, the rabbis are pushing their compliant voters - some 10 per cent of the electorate - towards Mr Sharon's camp.Blame for the failure of peace talks with the Palestinians lies on both sides, and also with the Americans, but Mr Barak has a sizable share. He billed himself as the Israeli leader who offered to give back more to Mr Arafat than any before him, although it fell well short of what most Palestinians perceived to be their entitlement under UN resolutions.But he also alienated the Palestinians by continuing to build Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Palestinians soon began to complain that he was negotiating in bad faith. Critically, he shelved several confidence-building incremental steps in the Oslo peace process - such as the release of Palestinian prisoners and the opening of a second passage linking the West Bank and Gaza.Last night, the real question was not so much whether Mr Barak would lose, but whether his defeat would be so large that he would have to resign the Labour leadership. This will make it easier for Labour to join a government of national unity that Mr Sharon says he wants to create.