Labour party hopes its newly-elected leader will be a match for Netanyahu
occupied jerusalem — Israel’s main opposition Labour party has taken a risk in electing as its new leader an ex-businessman who only joined months ago, hoping a fresh approach can topple Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Avi Gabbay, a 50-year-old former head of one of Israel’s largest telecommunications companies, is far from the typical leader of the party that once dominated the country’s politics but which has waned in influence in recent years.
He grew up in Jerusalem in a working class family that had emigrated from Morocco and has a reputation of having pulled himself up by his own bootstraps to succeed. He has never been a member of Israel’s Knesset, or parliament, and only joined Labour in December before mounting what was once seen as a longshot bid to become its leader.
Some have compared his meteoric rise to that of French President Emmanuel Macron.
Gabbay has repeatedly talked of injecting new life into Labour, perceived by many as having grown stagnant, with repeated opinion polls showing it losing support to centrist and right-wing parties.
On Tuesday morning, a day after winning the election, the married father of three who has run marathons took a bicycle ride around his neighbourhood in Tel Aviv.
“This is a morning of new hope,” he told journalists outside his home after defeating longtime politician Amir Peretz with 52 per cent of the vote. But Gabbay faces a difficult task to win back voters at a time when Israeli politics has undergone a shift to the right, with Netanyahu’s Likud in power since 2009.
Attitudes among Israelis have hardened toward the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, initially pushed forward by Labour. In the last general elections in 2015, Labour allied with ex-foreign minister Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua to form the Zionist Union, gaining 24 seats in the 120-seat Knesset to become the largest opposition force.
Since then opinion polls have shown a decline in support and Labour’s outgoing head Isaac Herzog.