The ouster of Hatnua Party Chair and chair of the opposition Tzipi Livni from the Zionist Camp in front of the cameras on Jan. 1 was for Chair of the Labor Party Avi Gabbay an act of leadership that was meant to rev up his faltering election campaign for prime minister. But according to responses in the field and various polls, the effect of the ouster shattered not only the Zionist Camp but also both Labor and Hatnua. This is bad news for the left at the beginning of the election cycle. Alliances and unions have not formed yet in the left-wing camp in order to create an alternative for the Likud’s rule headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and this option only grows more and more unlikely.
According to initial polls after the ouster, the Labor Party continues to collapse to only 7-8 mandates. The Hatnua Party headed by Livni teeters around the vote threshold.
The Zionist Camp, with its 24 mandates, fell apart in one ugly moment. Much has been written — and will be written — on the event, the likes of which Israeli politics hasn’t seen yet: a party leader brutally on live TV ousts his senior political partner who holds the role of chair of the opposition. To Livni’s credit, it can be said that she recovered quickly from the hit, stood in front of the cameras an hour later and announced that she will continue in her path.
While Gabbay got out of a partnership that burdened and overshadowed him, with his deed he turned his party into a bloody battlefield. It is undoubtedly the worst period in the history of the Labor Party, so much so that there is serious fear for its continued existence. Several prominent Labor Knesset members, including Eitan Cabel, Ayelet Nahmias-Verbin and Yossi Yona, called Jan. 3 for Gabbay to resign from leading the party; several Labor activists are forming a plan to depose him by convening the party institutions. The chance of this happening isn’t great, but it reflects an atmosphere of chaos. The feeling in the party is that it has lost its way, and is on the brink of falling off a cliff. “The significance of this could be the disappearance of a great movement,” Cabel said in an emotional interview to Army Radio Jan. 3. He did not exaggerate.
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