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New Israeli Labor chief plans party takeover

Avi Gabbay is not the first chairman of the Labor Party who wanted to change the party's constitution in order to gain control, but he is the most ambitious one.
Avi Gabbai, the new leader of Israel's centre-left Labour party, gestures as he delivers his victory speech after winning the Labour party primary runoff, at an event in Tel Aviv, Israel July 10, 2017. REUTERS/Amir Cohen     TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY - RTX3AWT5
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"Whenever I bypass something, I don’t go back on my tracks." It's one of Avi Gabbay's favorite sayings. The new Labor Party chairman uses it frequently to describe how determined and focused he is.

On Aug. 20, Gabby exhibited that determination when he revealed that he planned to introduce a series of aggressive changes to the party's constitution, and that he planned to bring them before the party's institutions as early as the beginning of September. Given the uproar this caused in the party, Gabbay is expected to have a tough fight ahead of him.

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