On Dec. 17, the Zionist Camp’s Knesset faction held its regular meeting at the start of what appeared to be a promising week for the main opposition party. Reports about a wave of price hikes and the public protest it seemed to be generating looked like a lifeline for the Zionist Camp, which has been sinking into electoral irrelevance over the past two months. Avi Gabbay, chair of the Labor party that is the Zionist Camp’s main component, blamed the government’s 2015 approval of a natural gas exploration scheme for the electricity price increase. At the time, Gabbay was minister of environmental protection representing the center-right Kulanu Party in the Netanyahu government, and the only minister who opposed the plan. He now felt it was his time to strike back at the government on the economic front and recoup public and electoral support for the opposition faction he joined some two years ago.

Contrary to Gabbay’s upbeat mood, most Zionist Camp Knesset members were still reeling from the poll results aired the previous evening by Hadashot TV. The poll sought to examine the effects of the price hikes, the tensions on Israel’s northern border and the impact of a possible political run by Lt. Gen. (res.) Benny Gantz as the head of a new party. According to the results, if the former military chief-of-staff does indeed establish a new party, the Zionist Camp would only get 10 Knesset seats in elections, less than half its current 24. The poll gives Gantz 16 seats and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud 28. That means that most Zionist Camp’s lawmakers would find themselves unemployed after elections are held in 2019.

While they have grown accustomed to bad poll results, there was something about this one that served as a cruel reminder of their dire political straits. If the Zionist Camp cannot rise in the polls with the government on the defensive over its economic policy, and with an as-yet nonexistent party with an unknown agenda led by Gantz poised to become the second Knesset party in size, saying the Zionist Camp is in deep trouble would be an understatement.

Depression over the poll may have been what led the lawmakers at their meeting to adopt an embarrassing decision to oppose proposed legislation by Knesset member Youssef Jabareen of the Arab Joint List revoking the Nationality Law (anchoring the Jewish character of the State of Israel). A vote on revoking the controversial law adopted by the government this past summer was scheduled for two days hence. In July, the Zionist Camp voted against the bill, arguing that it undermined the values of equality and discriminates against the country’s 21% Arab minority. It even waged a public relations campaign against the law from the opposition benches. However, although its decision this week to reject Jabareen’s bill runs counter to its original stand, only a few comments were heard about the illogical decision, which was then adopted.