Israel‘s Labor Party: The Leadership Mess and the Future

From the foundation of Israel in 1948 until the election of Menahem Begin in 1977, Israel's Labor Party and its forerunner, Mapai, dominated every Israeli government. Even since it began alternating or sharing power with Likud, Labor has remained one of the two major blocs, often the larger one even when it did not hold the Prime Ministership. It has more seats then Likud in the present Knesset, for example, though Ariel Sharon is Prime Minister.

Labor has been led by some of the biggest names in Israel's history: David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres. Though it has evolved from the socialist ideology and kibbutznik base of its early days, it remains a party of the left, and the major party more committed to the peace process.

Labor's fortunes in recent years have swung wildly: Ehud Barak's solid defeat of Binyamin Netanyahu in 1999, but Barak's own humiliation at the hands of Ariel Sharon this year, both in a sense reflections of the system of direct election of the Prime Minister, which has now been abolished.

Barak's fall left Labor leaderless, though its elder statesman, former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who is Foreign Minister in the present coalition government, stepped in as de facto leader until a primary could be held this fall.

For varying reasons, several key Labor politicians chose not to compete for the leadership at this time: such "princes" as Haim Ramon, Shlomo Ben-Ami and Yossi Beilin — all of whom certainly have aspirations to the leadership — sat out the primary. Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg ( Profile, this issue) was running, and he was widely expected to win easily. Burg is a prominent figure in the dovish wing of Labor, and also has an appeal to religious Jews most Laborites do not enjoy. Burg is less experienced internationally, though as head of the Jewish Agency he did establish many foreign contacts. His only challenger was Binyamin Ben-Eliezer (Profile, this issue), Defense Minister in the current coalition. Until he was named to that post last March, Bin-Eliezer was considered a decidedly second-string Labor Party figure, somewhat to the right, a former general. When it became clear that these would be the only two candidates, Burg seemed certain of victory.

But polls showed rapid gains by Bin-Eliezer as a lackluster campaign proceeded. The leadership fight was of course overshadowed by the continuing intifada and the vote itself by a wave of suicide bombings in Jerusalem. The most senior figures in the party, with a few exceptions, did not endorse either candidate. Peres and Ramon and Ben-Ami did not back either, and polls suggested a majority of Labor voters did not think either candidate was of sufficient caliber to lead the party at a critical time.

In the end, only about half of party members even voted, and the results were a virtual draw. Ben-Eliezer led Burg through most of the night of vote counting, but then heavy pro-Burg votes in Druze areas put Burg ahead by about 1,000 votes. Ben-Eliezer cried foul and vote-counting was halted with a few precincts still to report; when it resumed, Burg was ahead, but Ben-Eliezer was threatening legal challenges and appeals as this went to press.

This Dossier looks at the bizarre Labor Primary and the implications for the Labor Party and for the present coalition.

The two men who sought to lead the Labor Party are profiled on Pages Nine and Ten of this issue: they are rather different men. Avraham Burg is only 46 years old, and sought to portray himself as bringing Labor into a new generation of leadership; Binyamin Ben-Eliezer is 65 and has been a second-string political figure since retiring from the Army some 20 years ago. Burg is a dove; though he did serve in the Israel Defense Forces he did not rise above Lieutenant's rank, and then became active in the Peace Now movement at the time of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Ben-Eliezer by contrast was a Brigadier General. He belongs to the party's right wing, having originally entered the party with Ezer Weizman as part of the Yahad movement.

Though the two men represent clearly different wings of the party, few would have expected them to be the two candidates. As noted earlier, such prominent Labor politicians as Haim Ramon, Shlomo Ben-Ami, and Yossi Beilin sat out the primary; only Beilin (who supported Burg even bothered to indicate a preference between Burg and Ben-Eliezer.

There appears to be a widespread assumption among many Labor voters that the winner of this primary would be a transitional figure, someone to lead the party between the collapse of Ehud Barak and a future return to power. Since the direct election for Prime Minister system, which made the party leadership a key goal, has been scrapped, the winner of the current primary can expect to face a challenge for the leadership whenever elections seem likely. But since polls show Labor at historic lows in the wake of the intifada, neither Burg nor Ben-Eliezer seems likely to push for early elections. The division within the party revealed by the primary results makes an early election even less likely.

The sense that the Labor leadership vote did not matter at this time seems to have been the reason for low turnout; only about 50% of Labor members voted, and since these are dues-paying members of the party, they are generally active. Their apparent lack of interest was also suggested by polls in which over half of Labor members polled said neither candidate was of sufficient stature to lead the party.

Defenders of the candidates pointed to the situation in 1974, when after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, such prominent figures as Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan stepped aside, and figures who then had been considered second-string — Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres — emerged to contest the leadership. The Rabin-Peres rivalry lasted more than 20 years, until Rabin's assassination in 1995, and helped mold the Labor Party of today.

It may be true that in 1974 neither Rabin nor Peres was at the front rank of the party. But Rabin had served as Chief of Staff of the Army and Ambassador to Washington, so he had both a solid military background and international contacts. Peres had been on the outs with the party because he had joined David Ben-Gurion's breakaway Rafi, but he otherwise had solid party credentials, was a Ben-Gurion protégé, and had been prominent since the early days of the state.

Neither Burg nor Ben-Eliezer has those kinds of credentials; Burg is well-known in part because of his father, Joseph (Yosef) Burg, the longtime anchor of the National Religious Party, but his own credentials are less solid.

By contrast, Haim Ramon, Shlomo Ben-Ami and Yossi Beilin are longtime Labor "princes" who can be expected to mount a challenge for the leadership when the time is right. Beilin, a protégé of Peres, is one of the most dovish figures in Israeli politics and has maintained close links with Palestinian interlocutors; the present mood of the electorate is such that he is unlikely to make a move soon. Ramon and Ben-Ami are also dovish in their own ways, but Ramon was a vocal critic of Ehud Barak while Ben-Ami was his last Foreign Minister and participated in Camp David II in the summer of 2000.

Problems Facing the Winner
Whether Burg, the apparent winner at presstime, or Ben-Eliezer ultimately proves victorious after possible court challenges, the divisions in the Party are apparent, and the other "princes" are likely to have their knives out soon enough. There are other problems as well.

One of these is what to do about Shimon Peres. The former Prime Minister is the party's surviving elder statesman; he is also Foreign Minister and, more to the point, currently the Labor Party's chief representative in the Cabinet. Ben-Eliezer, though he also serves in the same Cabinet, said before the election that he would not change Peres' status. Burg's intentions were less clear. Peres reportedly has used his position at times to force Ariel Sharon's government to back down on some of its more controversial moves in fighting the intifada; Peres' international stature is far greater than any other Labor figure's; so Peres' future becomes an issue for the new Party Leader. Since it looks as if neither candidate can claim a clear mandate, Peres may remain in his present post indefinitely. If that is the case, he will also be a formidable presence with which the Party Leader will have to contend; neither Burg nor Ben-Eliezer will have anything like Peres' credibility internationally when it comes to foreign policy, so Peres will have plenty of clout if he wants to use it. And he has never been a man reticent about making his position known.

The Coalition
The deadlocked primary results also confuse the whole future of Labor in the Sharon coalition. Ben-Eliezer is Defense Minister in the coalition of course, and Labor is a partner with Likud. Burg has not been in the coalition because, as Speaker of the Knesset, he had an independent power base of sorts. Toward the end of the campaign, he indicated that he would step down as Speaker if elected Party Leader, and if he does so, the question then is whether he would join the Cabinet, and if so, in what position. He could hardly replace Ben-Eliezer in the Defense Ministry, given his thin military background and dovish reputation. He might covet Peres job as Foreign Minister, but his experience in that field is slight and Peres remains a formidable figure in an otherwise divided party. Burg could become a Minister without Portfolio (and probably a Deputy Prime Minister), but would still be seen as sharing the leadership of the party with Peres if the latter is in the Cabinet.

Furthermore, from his independent position as Speaker, Burg has espoused a more dovish line than the Labor members of the Cabinet have been free to do. His presence in the Cabinet might pull the government to the left, but more likely it would split the government, and a visible fracture could cause the collapse of the broad coalition Sharon presides over.

And here is the crux of the dilemma: neither Labor nor Ariel Sharon particularly want to see new elections.

In the case of Labor, the reasoning is obvious: Labor is, still, the largest single party bloc in the 15th Knesset, with 24 seats; but polls suggest that if new elections were held now, in the heat of the moment, it might win as few as 20 seats. Labor loyalists remember that during the original intifada, Likud seemed to benefit at first, and Yitzhak Shamir's government held on until 1992, when Labor won its first clear victory in years by offering a way out of the seeming deadlock of the intifada. That in turn produced the Oslo peace process.

With Oslo seemingly dead for the moment, Labor is not yet poised for a comeback, and popular opinion is blaming Barak for the problem. Labor does not want to risk a new election now. And if it pulled out of the government to protest some action of Sharon's, Sharon could still mathematically put together a far-right government, without the moderating influence of Labor.

Though Burg has, during the campaign, mentioned various things which might prompt him, as leader, to pull Labor out of the coalition, actually doing so would create many problems. As for Ben-Eliezer, his critics say he is not so much running to be leader of Labor (and thus an alternative to Sharon) so much as to be Sharon's number two in the national unity government. If Ben-Eliezer's challenge of Burg's lead were to prevail, it might be an advantage to Sharon, who could now deal with a more right-leaning Labor chief than Shimon Peres, and thus sideline Peres in Cabinet decisions. But Burg offers no such advantage to Sharon.

The Bibi Factor
Since Sharon is clearly somewhat hamstrung by the presence of Labor in his government, and knows that Likud would likely improve its standing in new elections, one may well ask, why then would Sharon not be eager for a new poll?

The answer is Binyamin Netanyahu. The former Prime Minister has been working on his comeback for several years. His devastating defeat by Barak in 1999 was to some extent redeemed by Barak's defeat in 2001, but "Bibi" Netanyahu did not run this year. Instead, Sharon, who himself is a somewhat "accidental" leader of Likud, became Prime Minister, and Bibi began arraying his political forces for when Sharon falters.

Ironically, Sharon, arguably the most hawkish figure in modern Israeli politics, has found himself under attack from the right for not taking a harder line against the Al-Aqsa intifada. He is constrained by his partnership with Labor (and by international pressure), while Netanyahu and his allies are free to criticize from the sidelines. (An increasing chorus of op-ed calls in the United States for a harder line against the Palestinian Authority also seems to be concentrated among columnists with a long history of close ties to Netanyahu.) So Sharon has his own challenges to ward off.

Future Battles within Labor
Labor — technically, Labor-Meimad, since the small religious party Meimad is joined with Labor as one faction in the current Knesset — controls 24 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. Of those 24 members of the Knesset, 12 declined to endorse any candidate in the primary. Nine endorsed Burg; three supported Ben-Eliezer. Labor's current ministers were particularly silent: Peres, Matan Vilna'i, Shimon Simhon and Ra'anan Cohen declined to endorse either candidate; Trade and Industry Minister Dalia Itzik was visiting Russia and was unavailable to vote.

Although each candidate presumably assumed that the whole party bloc would endorse him after his victory, the ambiguity of the results makes that unlikely, and also increases the likelihood that either Burg or Ben-Eliezer would appear as vulnerable to a leadership challenge before new elections.

Labor's Troubles and the Peace Process
Most hopes for a revival of the peace process are on hold at the moment, and many observers despair of making progress with Ariel Sharon in the Prime Ministry. But there are few scenarios that seem likely to bring Labor back into power any time soon, and with the party's internal divisions now on obvious display as a result of the primary, the future is far from clear.

Both candidates insisted they were planning to rebuild the party. Some in Labor wonder if that can be done while part of a Likud-led coalition, or if Labor needs to be out of government for a genuine restructuring and recreation of itself in a new image. But at the same time, few doubt that Labor is a moderating force in the present government. Burg, on the whole, seems far likelier to pursue Labor's commitment to the peace process than does Ben-Eliezer, and more likely to differentiate Labor from Likud or even take it out of the government. And Burg appears to be the winner, despite continuing challenges.

Still, the primary has revealed a mess in Labor's internal house, and until that is set in order by Burg or someone else, its hopes of returning to a major leadership role in the country are likely to remain in abeyance.

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