All the polls indicated that Israel's Labour Party would elect a "new and different" leader. He is neither new nor different, writes Graham Usher in Jerusalem On Tuesday the 110,000 members of Israel's Labour Party went to the polls to elect their new chairman and, they fervently hope, Israel's next prime minister. The first place went to a politician who, until recently, was a bit player on Israel's national stage. As for the hope, that is an "exercise in fantasyland prime ministers", in the words of one seasoned Israeli observer. The polls, rightly predicted that Labour's new leader will be Avram Mitzna. On the eve of the ballot, he was leading incumbent chairman, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, by 23 percentage points and his left-wing rival, Haim Ramon, by a colossal 41. The same polls show Ariel Sharon's Likud party sweeping the board for the general elections on 28 January, winning 36 seats in the 120-member parliament as against Labour's 18, the lowest ever representation for a movement that was once viewed as Israel's "natural" party of government. Mitzna's rise is inextricably connected to Labour's fall. After nearly two years in a "national unity" government where Labour ministers appeared to prefer spoils of office to the politics of principle, rank-and-file Labour members are looking to Mitzna to restore new hope to a party grown old by the failure of Oslo and the blood of the Palestinian Intifada. Mitzna may bring hope, not least to a Palestinian leadership desperate to escape the clutches of another Israeli government led by Sharon. But neither the man nor his policies can in anyway be described as new. Ashkenazi, an ex-general who saw time in Lebanon and the West Bank and former mayor of the most pro-Labour city in Israel, Mitzna belongs to the same genetic pool that produced such past labour leaders as Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak. Ben- Eliezer, by contrast, is an Iraqi born Sephardi, while Ramon won his political spurs as an activist in Israel's Histradut trade union movement rather than a soldier in the army. Mitzna is a chip off the oldest block in Israeli politics. As for his policies, these too are a return to the old in the guise of the new. If elected prime minister, he says he will immediately resume political negotiations with the Palestinians, "regardless of who is their leader", with the aim of reaching a permanent agreement "within a year" based on "earlier stages of negotiations" such as those conducted at Camp David in 2000 and Taba in 2001. If these negotiations fail, Israel will immediately withdraw from all of Gaza and most of the West Bank except for the main settlement blocs, including those around Jerusalem. "If it becomes apparent they [the Palestinians] are not ready [for compromise], as the people responsible for the security of the State of Israel, we will determine the security border. The political border will [have to] wait until there's someone to talk to," Mitzna told Israel's Haaretz newspaper on 19 November. Aside from suggesting that he would be prepared to negotiate again with Yasser Arafat, this programme is almost word-for- word that advocated by Ramon. Mitzna's differences with Ben- Eliezer, though, are more substantial. Ben-Eliezer too has said he is ready to return to negotiations based on Taba and even the Saudi proposal endorsed by the Arab summit in March. But he has ruled out any form of unilateral separation from the occupied territories as well as negotiations with a Palestinian leadership headed by Arafat. Moreover, he has vowed to return Labour to a national unity government with Likud, regardless of which party forms a majority in the January elections. Should this happen, Labour leftwingers such as Yossi Beilin have said they will leave Labour and form a new "social democratic alliance" with parties like Meretz. Sharon too wants a national unity government, and not only because the departure of Beilin and the left would reduce Labour's parliamentary representation to an insignificant rump. Sharon is keenly aware that his greatest political asset over the last two years was that he headed a unity government with Labour rather than a partisan one with the right and that, without it, his policies of reconquest in the West Bank could have caused a real polarisation in Israeli society. In the meantime, he is readying to face down the challenge to his party leadership posed by Binyamin Netanyahu at the Likud primaries on 28 November. Polls show him winning that contest. On Tuesday he gained a further fillip when former army chief of staff and current Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz, threw his weight behind Sharon rather than Netanyahu. "Ariel Sharon is a responsible and rational prime minister, and everyone must unite behind him. This is a fateful time for Israel," said Mofaz. Related stories: Expanding the settlements Alone with the setllers Bloody electioneering 14 - 20 November 2002 Lesser evils 7 - 13 November 2002
