The election of Knesset member Amir Peretz as chairman of the Labor Party on July 2 was a resounding blow to former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and his plan to lead a large left-wing bloc. Barak took politics by storm on June 26 when he returned with a new party and worked behind the scenes to try to get senior Labor Party member Itzik Shmuli elected Labor's leader. It is thought that had that happened, Labor would have immediately merged with Barak’s still-to-be named new party. In actuality, Barak saw it as an opportunity to make a run for the Prime Minister’s Office.

Although this all sounds politically unviable, Barak is known for his tangled, complicated plans. In his thinking, he would be able to take over the Labor Party through Shmuli and then join forces with Meretz, creating a left-wing bloc and emerging as an alternative to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This assumption was based on the perception that Blue and White Chairman Benny Gantz has shown himself to be weak in mounting an effective opposition to Netanyahu. The extent to which Barak was invested in this initiative can be seen in the series of steps he took over the last few days.

Barak attempted to get key figures from Labor to join him, and in doing so, managed to recruit Yaya Fink from the party’s Young Guard and Noa Rothman, granddaughter of late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Barak appealed to the very heart of the left, embraced Rabin’s legacy and promised that he would not join Netanyahu under any circumstances. During the process, he met with Shmuli and Knesset member Stav Shaffir, the two young Laborites who ran against Peretz to lead the Labor Party.

On the day of the Labor primary, Barak announced a press conference in Tel Aviv to make himself relevant. The media was initially invited to Beit Sokolov in Tel Aviv, home of the Israeli Journalists Association and also one of the biggest Labor Party polling stations. Peretz’s team was livid, seeing the move as a callous act of interference in the Labor Party’s activities and saying as much in a sharply worded threat to Barak. Realizing that he had gone too far, Barak moved his press conference to a hotel.