New dawn for Labour as Herzog dumped
ON TUESDAY, two years after losing the Knesset election, Isaac Herzog lost the Labour leadership as he failed to go through to the second round of the party’s leadership contest.
The two remaining candidates are former party leader and defence minister Amir Peretz, and former environment minister Avi Gabbay, who joined Labour only a few months ago.
The choice facing Labour members is now between the left-wing option, Mr Peretz, a former trade union leader and a staunch supporter of founding a Palestinian state; and the centrist Mr Gabbay, who admitted in one of the campaign debates that he once voted Likud.
Mr Peretz won with 32 per cent of the vote but was short of the 40 per cent required to be elected leader in the first round. Despite coming first, he is not necessarily the favourite to win in the second round because many of those who voted for other candidates are expected to coalesce around Mr Gabbay.
Mr Peretz has angered many Labour members in the past by leaving the party twice for competing lists. Mr Gabbay, by contrast, is a newcomer
From left: Avi Gabbay, Isaac Herzog and Amir Peretz to the party and is viewed by many as an attractive and fresh candidate without baggage.
Winning 27 per cent and coming second is regarded a huge achievement for Mr Gabbay. Until just three years ago, he was the CEO of Bezek, Israel’s largest telecommunications company. In 2015, he joined the new Kulanu party, working with its founder, Moshe Kahlon. He was appointed environment minister in the new government but chose to resign when Yisrael Beiteinu joined the coalition, and only this year joined Labour. Despite being a newcomer to the party, he now has momentum going into the second round, while Mr Peretz, who has a strong base of supporters, but not a majority, may have peaked.
The result was particularly dire for Mr Herzog. He received only 17 per cent of the vote and narrowly avoided being pushed into fourth place by Erel Margalit.
In a Facebook message, Mr Herzog thanked his supporters and said he would be consulting them in the coming days over who to support in the second round, which will take place on Monday.
Mr Herzog paid the price not only for the election defeat but also the failed attempts to join Mr Netanyahu’s coalition, as well as the feeling that Labour has been a weak opposition.
In recent polls, the Zionist Union, of which Labour is the main component, is predicted to lose as many as half its current seats in the Knesset.