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A couple of days after Shimon Peres's extravagant 80th birthday party, a meeting of the Middle-East committee of Socialist International took place in Tel Aviv. Most of its participants — many of them representatives of European social democratic parties — had been among the 3,000 guests who filled Heichal Hatarbut (The Hall of Culture) in Tel Aviv, the venue of the birthday bash. There, they had rubbed shoulders with guests ranging from Bill Clinton (who sang John Lennon's 'Imagine') and South Africa's ex-President F. W. De Klerk to film star Kathleen Turner.

But the convivial atmosphere at the party didn't carry over to the Socialist International meeting, where the octogenarian found himself receiving not birthday gifts but pointed criticism. Peres is well known all over the world as the "father" of the Oslo accords, as a peace-seeker. But his image at home is quite different. While he is despised by the Right for his part in the Oslo process, he is mocked by the Left for his political zig-zagging.

Most Israelis see him as a politician who will do anything to promote himself, even at the expense of his friends or his beliefs. The late Yitzhak Rabin's description of Peres as, "an indefatigable subverter" will never fade from the Israeli collective memory. I think Peres's problem is that he wants both power and respect. Too often, those two just don't go together.

His decision to join the Sharon government in the height of the intifadeh was one of the main reasons for the Left's great defeat in the last elections. That decision came back to haunt him at the Socialists International meeting. Peres opened the meeting with a speech about his commitment to the peace process. He put the entire blame for his loss to Netanyahu in the 1996 elections on Arafat's shoulders. He said that prior to those elections, Arafat did not do enough to fight terrorism and, as a result, handed the Israeli leadership to the Right. Peres neglected to mention a few significant things that happened during his short period as Rabin's successor: that, for instance, he himself did not exactly make all efforts to implement the accords.

Unfortunately, the gap between Peres's big inspirations and his small political conscience, and the clash between his great vision and his big ego, are things that affect not just him alone but Israeli society as a whole.

But unlike the guests at his birthday party, the audience at the Socialists International confab had not all come to praise Peres. "We are all friends here", said both the representatives from Greece and Sweden, each in their turn, "But Shimon, we are concerned about the positions presented by the Labour party". They pointed out that there was a gap between the Labour statements of commitment to peace, and it's will to sit in the same government with Sharon. The Austrian representative's criticism was even harsher. "When the Austrian Socialist party lost the elections", he said, "the party decided to change its agenda and its leaders: a new generation replaced the old one. But with you, Mr. Peres, I'm hearing the same speech for 20 years now."

Peres's response was to start shouting at the Austrian representative, accusing him of being pro-Palestinian and "prejudiced." The participants were stunned by Peres's outburst. This was not the great peace-maker and visionary, respected all over the world, whom they had felicitated just two days earlier. No, this was the pompous, self–serving politician most Israelis recognize. Unfortunately, the gap between Peres's big inspirations and his small political conscience, and the clash between his great vision and his big ego, are things that affect not just him alone but Israeli society as a whole.

Just imagine (as Clinton might have sung) what could have been if, after his defeat in 1996, Peres had retired from local politics and instead reinvented himself as a powerful moral force, harnessing his international reputation to pressure both Sharon and Arafat to keep moving on the peace process. I believe Peres could have become the Middle East's Nelson Mandela. How sad, for us all, that he wasn't capable of such greatness.

• MICHAL LEVERTOV
• Not everybody at Shimon Peres's birthday came to sing praises, Michal Levertov tells TIME