Labor Chairman Avi Gabbay is currently visiting Washington on the occasion of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) annual conference. Gabbay’s tweet, directly from Capitol Hill, could not have better demonstrated the difference between his peaceful sojourn in Washington and the warfare waiting for him in Israel.

Gabbay tweeted about a successful meeting he held with Sen. Dick Durban, the Democratic whip from Illinois. “An important meeting for continued cooperation with the Democratic delegate for support for Israel,” Gabbay wrote, attaching a photo of the two in the midst of conversation. The tweet was one of a series of updates from his diplomatic tour in Washington that included a speech at AIPAC, meetings with decision-makers and interviews, but the hemorrhaging Labor Party he will return to will soon snap him back to reality.

As he was preparing for his speech at AIPAC, Channel 10 published a disastrous poll for the Zionist Camp (of which Labor is the largest partner), predicting 12 mandates for the list if elections were to be held now — half of its power today. While Yesh Atid headed by Yair Lapid is stable with 24 mandates and the Likud headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu grows to 29 mandates despite his ongoing criminal investigations, Gabbay and his party are collapsing. Gabbay needs time to minimize the damage, to rebrand himself and try to regain the mandates he lost to Lapid. A head-to-head match with Netanyahu is out of the question right now.

Despite the tense situation, the Labor Party’s Knesset members are uncharacteristically silent, making no moves to depose Gabbay. According to the poll, most of them will not return to the Knesset after the next election, but they are quietly watching Netanyahu grow stronger.