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.
