|
|
December 31, 2004/Tevet 19 5765, Vol. 57, No. 18
Is the Labor party bouncing back?
LESLIE SUSSER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - Things seem to be looking up for Israel's beleaguered Labor Party - though it's too soon to tell if the hopeful signs are enough to overcome the stigma of the Oslo peace process and allow Labor to again challenge the Likud as a serious rival for national power.
Still, Labor can take heart from several recent devel-opments: It's about to rejoin the government, an impending leadership race has excited party activists and the victory of young faces in a vote for the party's Cabinet seats in a national unity government is seen as confirmation that Labor finally is emerging from a four-year slump.
The elevation of the young legislators over some of Labor's more seasoned politicians and leadership hopefuls also shows the strength of former Prime Minister Ehud Barak. In the two months since Barak announced his decision to return to politics and compete for the Labor leadership, he has regained sufficient control of the party's Central Committee to have a decisive influence on the outcome of the vote for ministers.
But whether those developments are enough to win back the public's confidence - after the Labor-led Oslo peace process exploded into violence more than four years ago, the party suffered a precipitous drop at the polls - remains to be seen.
The young politicians catapulted to the front rank of national politics last week were legislators Ofir Pines-Paz, 42, and Yitzhak Herzog, 44, both of whom have wide national appeal, especially among younger voters.
Pines-Paz decided to go into national politics in the wake of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination in November 1995. Standing near Rabin when the prime minister was gunned down, Pines-Paz says he vowed to fight on for the ideals Rabin stood for.
Pines-Paz was elected to the Knesset at age 34 in 1996. After Barak's defeat in the 2001 election he became party secretary, but he resigned little more than a year later.
Critics claim Pines-Paz couldn't handle the job; he says that after restoring Labor's finances, he wanted to focus on his work in the Knesset, where he has been honored as an outstanding legislator. He will become Interior Minister.
Herzog, son of the late President Chaim Herzog, first came to prominence as Cabinet secretary in Barak's 1999-2001 government. Elected to the Knesset for the first time in 2003, Herzog's rise in the party has been meteoric.
In the Knesset, Herzog played a key role in the powerful Finance Committee and became the main mediator among rival contenders for Labor leadership on matters of procedure.
As Housing Minister, Herzog will be able to enforce the freeze on Jewish settlement building in the Palestinian territories that his National Religious Party predecessor often tried to circumvent.
The other member of the emerging young Labor trio, Shalom Simchon, is more experienced than the other two, having served as agriculture minister under Barak. Indeed, he's very close to the former prime minister.
The election of the young legislators, none of them military men, also was a blow to the party's many ex-generals, some of whom harbored or still harbor leadership aspirations. Five ex-generals competed for the seven available ministerial posts. An eighth post is guaranteed to the party chairman, Shimon Peres.
Despite the fact that there are two ex-party leaders among them only two of the ex-generals made it to the top seven spots.
Peres also saw his standing slip. Having allowed the Central Committee to choose the list of ministers rather than choosing them himself, Peres was left with few supporters among the ministers chosen.
Moreover, Barak believes that Peres, as the senior Labor minister in the Sharon government, will take flak from the party faithful for the government's inevitable failures. Barak is betting that his firm hold on the Central Committee, his alliances with key players like the new young stars and the possibility that once in government Labor will be outmaneuvered by Sharon will lead to a turnaround in the coming months.
Despite the gains by the young generation, Labor is unlikely to have a younger, civilian party leader in the near future. Chances are that a general will be at the helm after the next leadership race, and that generals will be fighting it out again the time after that.
Still, whoever becomes Labor's next leader could have an impressive cluster of young, dynamic civilian players at his side - and, come Election Day, that could make all the difference with Israeli voters.
|
|
