Labor Party Chairman Avi Gabbay has made some controversial declarations recently, including that peace would not mean necessarily evacuating settlements. He has also come under harsh condemnation for his sycophantic campaign to secure the support of religious and right-wing Israelis. Secular Israelis, fearful of religious coercion and influence on the school system, were shocked by Gabbay’s crude attempt to enlist God in the public discourse on the future of the occupied territories, lands the right and the religious view as their biblical, God-given right. Members of Israel’s peace camp were outraged at the reservations voiced by the newly elected party leader about evacuating Israelis from West Bank settlements. Jewish Israelis who believe in coexistence with Arab-Israelis were furious at Gabbay’s rejection of a future partnership in government with the Joint List of predominantly Arab parties. Even Knesset members of the Zionist Camp including co-leader Tzipi Livni were riled by what seemed to be an attempt by a right-winger in Labor clothing to co-opt their center-left party.

On second, perhaps conspiratorial thought, Gabbay’s right-leaning pronouncements might be a brilliant political tactic. Let’s assume that his statements have alienated all those Zionist left-wing party members who never miss a peace demonstration and flock in droves to every rally commemorating slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Who will they vote for in the next elections? If Gabbay’s courting of the religious right drives them crazy, centrist Yair Lapid (leader of Yesh Atid) is unlikely to ease their qualms. For every skullcap that Gabbay pulls out of his pocket, as he did recently in a clear nod to the religious right, Lapid has a photo of himself wrapped in a prayer shawl.

Would a Jew bothered by Gabbay’s shunning of the Joint List vote for Lapid, the man who coined the term “Zoabis” (a derogatory reference to provocative Arab Knesset member Haneen Zoabi)? Would the leftists disillusioned with Gabbay support finance minister and head of the center-right Kulanu Party Moshe Kahlon, who provides political backing for the most right-wing government in Israeli history? How many Jewish Labor veterans would go so far as to pledge allegiance to the Joint List, which includes the Islamic Movement?

We are thus left with Meretz, the only Zionist party proud to be known as the “secular left.” True, Meretz joined the government of the late Rabin in the early 1990s, along with the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, and looked the other way on issues of religion and state in order to save the 1993 Oslo Accord with the Palestinians. But successive Meretz leaders, from the late Shulamit Aloni to the current party chair Zehava Gal-On, did not for one minute consider joining a government that undermines the prospects of peace with the Palestinians and embraces the settlers living on Palestinian lands. Meretz's plunging from its peak in 1992, when it won 12 Knesset seats, to five in the 2015 elections and even to an all-time low of three in 2009 has little to do with the party’s positions.