Israel's Next Left
Foreign Policy reports,
If Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s November departure from Likud amounted to a political earthquake, then Amir Peretz’s victory a week earlier over Shimon Peres for Labor Party leader was the tectonic plate that triggered it. In founding the new centrist party, Kadima, Sharon was not merely demonstrating more of the headstrong independence that earned him the nickname “Bulldozer.” He was also attempting to check Peretz’s growing popularity. Peretz’s win convinced Sharon that he finally needed to abandon the far-right Likud elements that fought so vociferously against his Gaza withdrawal plan.
In his last government, Sharon was able to craft policies unilaterally with a complacent, Peres-led Labor in his corner, but Peretz’s victory upended that advantage. Peretz, a working-class, Moroccan-born immigrant who grew up in an Israeli transit camp and now leads the trade union federation Histadrut, defied all the pundits’ predictions in mid-November when he won the Labor vote and pulled his party from Sharon’s government. He revitalized the moribund faction by campaigning on traditional bread-and-butter economic issues, such as a higher minimum wage and new welfare programs for the poor, who have long felt ignored by Sharon’s austere budgets. According to Henry Siegman, senior fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Peretz offers “new blood, new, young leadership and energy, and the real possibility of new thinking and policies.”
That article is factually correct but a bit out of date. For instance, Peretz is no longer head of the Histadrut, having resigned that position upon alighting the Labor throne. Since then however, his position in the polls has slipped tremendously while Kadima’s has grown significantly. Labor’s diminishing stature is ascribed to several things, including his over emphasis on social welfare issues, the lack of a clearly articulated and coherent defense policy and the departure of Shimon Peres from the party. There’s also that Stalinesque mustache but I personally find that cute. So yeah… new left? Maybe. But with currennt predictions giving Labor 19 seats in the Knesset, down from 33, one might also consider the term newly irrelevant. The article’s laudatory tone does not reflect Labor’s current predicament in the polls.
I’m a fan of Peretz, but as noted, he lacks military experience and I’m waiting to see if he can muster up IDF support and wisdom in his campaign. He runs on socio-economic issues: Its time that he speaks to the ways that moving towards a solution for the conflict will benefit those left behind in Israel’s free market. A trip to Yad Mordechai, farvos nit?
Just commenting on the snippetthat Mob posted,
it is so off base with reality and the Israeli public.
Peres lost (the labour primaries, let’s not take things out of proportion) because of two reasons; Peres was leading the party nowhere and basically to be Sharon’s bitch, and the other reason is because Peretz brought in a ton of voters that actually came out to vote.
Sharon left the likud because he realized that hijacking a party can only be done once. After pulling a 180 on the platform he won the elections on, he would have a really hard time one more time seeing as how he didn’t have a majority in the Likud and had lost internal votes on policy numerous times (and ignored them).
Sharon was planning this for months. We all knew that the Labour party would bolt after the disengagement, and he realized that he needed to keep attracting the major swing vote that he so attracted to the Likud in 2001 increasing their seats from 20 to 40.
Another juicy item is that Peretz’s win did convince Sharon to bolt, because his right hand man Peres had lost, and Peres would not be able to become Likud.
revitalized the moribund faction huh?
He won by only a few thousand votes when only about 40 000 people showed up to vote. The ‘left’ was listless. Sharon stole its policies. It got into the knesset last time with about 20 seats and that’s where it is still standing.
A lot of excitement over nothing.
When I hear someone from the CFR say, Peretz offers “new blood, new, young leadership and energy, and the real possibility of new thinking and policies.†it probably means that Peretz is so amateur that the US will be able to mold him as it wishes while he gains experience.
there’s a great deal of truth to josh’s points about how peretz was able to engineer his victory within labor. that doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that his victory is any less significant in terms of its overall political significance. and we have yet to see the degree to which peretz’ leadership will re-direct the mizrahi vote away from shas and likud towards labor. only time will tell. i’m very curious to see how that shakes out.
however, what makes little sense is josh’s statement that because peretz is allegedly amateur, he will be easily molded by washington – should he even get as far as becoming premier. i sincerely doubt that peretz would be so pliable in such an event. given peretz’ politics and his track record, in all likelihood, he would have a grudgingly warm relationship with washington. emphasis on grudgingly. israeli premiers have been so in the past. this wouldn’t be totally out of step.
right now, it seems, peretz is having a great deal of difficulty communicating with the US at all. there was an interesting aside from shmuel rosner in ha’aretz recently where he quoted someone here – i forget their name – who complained about a complete lack of outreach from the peretz camp to the US jewish community altogether. that in itself is counterproductive to his efforts.
the problems with peretz is that he’s a superdove regarding the arabs and a socialist on domestic policies, the israelis are already turning away from him, whatever Netanayus (sic) morarilty and reliability, he was a slight reformer on the economy, attempting to bring a little bit of the free market to the stalinism practiced by his predecessors, as a result Israel boomed this last year. Let’s hope the economy frees up, the courts reform, and the idf stay vigilent.