A New Labour?

By Jonathan Cummings

The Labour Party, the party that founded the State of Israel, is electing a new leader today. It’s a job with some history behind it. The winner will line up with nine of his or her predecessors who went on to run the country. Labour led Israel uninterrupted through its first thirty years, through the birth pains of independence, through wars and later, to the beginning of a peace process with the Palestinians and to peace with Jordan.

The four candidates present the 66,000 party members with some real dilemmas. Sheli Yechimovich, the leading candidate, is a former journalist who refuses to talk about the moribund peace process and wants Labour to return to its socialist roots. While party elders bemoan the desertion of Labour’s natural playing field of the ‘peace and security’ discourse, Yehimovich may be able to win the leadership outright tonight by scooping more than 40% of the vote. Trailing her is former party leader and former defence minister Amir Peretz. A traditional appeal to party members on the need to restart peace talks with the Palestinians, and an impressive grass-roots organisation, could bring his voters in large numbers and force a run-off vote.

Bringing up the rear are another former party leader and IDF general, Amram Mitzna, and former welfare minister Isaac Herzog. Although Mitzna was swept away by Ariel Sharon in the 2003 elections, he returns to national politics after a five-year term as mayor of the hard-scrabble southern town of Yeruham. Herzog is as close to aristocracy as Israel gets with presidents, generals, a Chief Rabbi and government ministers in his immediate family. His own career is highly impressive spending most of the last ten years around the cabinet table. Although neither of them can win, they will still be significant figures influencing the future of the party.

Despite an already packed news agenda, the Labour leadership is the lead story in today’s news. Instead of the Palestinian bid for membership of the UN, the meltdown in Israel’s relationships with Egypt and Turkey or the social protests that have brought hundreds of thousands of Israelis to the streets in recent months, Israelis are scratching their heads about the future of the Labour Party. There is in-depth analysis of how voter turnout might affect the result, of how difficult party primaries are to predict, and of each candidate’s ability to get their supporters to the polling stations.

In fact, one needs to pinch oneself to remember that the leadership battle is over a party which currently has only eight seats in the 120-seat Knesset. To remark that the Labour Party is at a historical low-point hardly captures the enormity of the implosion. Israelis have largely turned their back on Labour. Ravaged by its failure to deliver on the promise of a comprehensive peace deal with the Palestinians, by the creation of the centrist Kadima Party which sucked significant part of its leadership and many of its voters away, and by Ehud Barak’s defection in order to remain in the Netanyahu government, the party is barely a shell of its historic self. It has also developed a nasty habit of hastily dethroning its leaders, with more changes in the past decade than in the previous fifty years. It’s hardly a recipe for success.

But here’s the thing. Israel’s love-hate relationship with the Labour Party is far from over. Already the polls predict a modest comeback in the next elections, with the party crossing back into double-figure territory. It’s not enough to even dream of forming a government, but it may be enough to carry on the fight. As long as most Israelis continue to believe the two-state solution, the product of the Israeli left, as the least bad way out of the conflict with the Palestinians, Labour should have a hope. Furthermore, With voices raised as never before in support of social justice and against ‘swinish’ capitalism, tomorrow’s new Labour leader has an opportunity to catch the new political wave, and may cautiously venture that the game is not yet up.

Jonathan Cummings is the Director of Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM )Israel Office. He is writing in a personal capacity.