The top tier of candidates elected in the Feb. 11 Labor Party primaries consists of a diverse and high-quality team. Nevertheless, it also indicates that Labor has stepped back from center stage and no longer offers a viable alternative to the current government. Elected to the top two slots were two young Knesset members, Itzik Shmuli (39) and Stav Shaffir (33), both of them icons of the social protest movement in the summer of 2011. Both candidates managed to beat two former party leaders: Shelly Yachimovich came in third and Amir Peretz, a former Labor minister of defense, came in fourth.
Yachimovich and Peretz are both powerful and experienced social brands, too, but the very party that established the state and dominated every aspect of life so high-handedly for decades is now nothing more than a small faction championing a social agenda. The evidence can be seen in the polls of the last few weeks, which give it an average of six to seven seats (similar to the numbers the same polls give to Arab-Israeli Knesset member Ahmad Tibi’s party). The party’s chances of recovery are slim.
