Zionist Camp pushes Livni to background
The Israeli public has not been convinced by the Zionist Camp's idea of a rotating premiership, which has helped boost Benjamin Netanyahu's changes of re-election.
On Feb. 15, the highly respected advertising executive Reuven Adler arrived at the bickering and floundering election headquarters of the Zionist Camp, on Yigal Allon Street in Tel Aviv, in an effort to minimize the damage to the party's flailing campaign. Just one month before the March 17 elections, Adler found a campaign headquarters in crisis. With stagnant polls, personal feuds and incessant leaks, it had lost all direction.
In addition to dealing with these ailments, Adler will have to rebuild the image of Zionist Camp Co-Chairman Isaac Herzog, rebranding him as a strong candidate for the premiership in the contest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Despite the general public's widespread negative sentiments toward Netanyahu, he still leads in all the polls that ask who is best suited to be prime minister, and he leads with a considerable advantage. According to an Israeli TV Channel 10 poll released Feb. 14, 58% of the public believes that Netanyahu will be the next prime minister.
One of the first steps that Adler is expected to take, as early as the next few days, is to abandon the joint campaign that flooded the country a month ago with posters showing Herzog and his fellow Zionist Camp co-chair, Tzipi Livni, together, along with the slogan “It’s us or him.”
This pretentious campaign was the result of the “shared leadership” strategy that brought Herzog and Livni together. The strategy was intended initially to promote a new model of leadership thought to be able to win widespread public support and lead to Netanyahu’s defeat. In its stead, a new, alternative campaign is already being cobbled together, focusing on presenting Herzog as a responsible prime minister. He may not be as charismatic as his rival, but he is still the person who will put the State of Israel back on the right track before everything comes crashing down.
