Israel’s Labour Party, which has pledged to initiate immediate peace talks and negotiations for the creation of a Palestinian state, is facing a humiliating rout in what may be the most important elections in a decade.
Facing its deepest security crisis in a generation, with almost 700 Israelis killed in two years of the al-Aqsa intifada, Israel seems determined to elect a government that will keep it on the path of war.
Despite corruption allegations engulfing the right-wing Likud and its hawkish leader, Ariel Sharon, which forced Likud support close to parity with Labour in the polls last week, the party has suffered a humiliating slump in recent days as it failed to capitalise on the difficulties of its rival.
The poor showing of Labour and its leader, Amram Mitzna, who was recently received by Tony Blair in London, is doubly humiliating, in that most analysts believe that many Israeli voters would agree with Labour’s policies but do not trust Labour to deliver.
It also follows two weeks of high drama in which Sharon was forced to defend the financial arrangements of himself and his two sons in a national televised address.
Two weeks ago Israelis were asking if Sharon could last out the scandal as the leader of Likud.
Now they are asking if Mitzna can survive as Labour’s leader, after a performance that many have derided as muddled in strategy and lacking in leadership.
It is a criticism that has leached out of Labour party insiders to infect ordinary Labour voters themselves.
The main intersection at the entrance to Jerusalem on Chaim Weizman Boulevard is where the parties traditionally send their volunteers with banners and car bumper stickers to canvass voters.
While it has been Labour’s banners that have been most in evidence in the past fortnight, not even those Labour volunteers who are holding them are sure they will vote for the party.
Hagai Feder encapsulates the problems facing Mitzna. A stocky student of 25, he despises Likud but has little enthusiasm for Mitzna.
‘Likud voters don’t have the same motivation to come out as Labour does,’ he admits, faced with a tiny handful of Likud volunteers to Labour’s crowd. As yet another driver slows to shout his support for Sharon, Feder admits that people are weary of elections – three since 1999 – and that Labour is unlikely to win this one.
‘Young people such as me don’t feel that any of the big parties represent us.’ He pauses and then adds quietly: ‘To tell the truth, I’m not sure that I will vote Labour. I don’t feel they are my cup of tea.’
The real surprise of this campaign has been the polling figures for the right-of-centre Shinui party, led by the maverick journalist Tommy Lapid, whose platform has largely been defined by his loathing of Israel’s ultra-right religious parties. And it is Shinui — not Labour — that appears to have scooped up the voters that have fled Likud.
In the past week, Labour’s poor showing has triggered soul-searching on the Left. How could Sharon, who has led his country ever deeper into conflict with the Palestinians and ever deeper into economic woe, bounce back with such electoral support?
‘A stranger would not understand it,’ said columnist Hemi Shalev in the Hebrew tabloid Maariv on Friday. ‘On one side, an elderly Prime Minister, clouded in scandals and devoid of actual achievements, and on the other hand a contender for the crown, relatively young, fairly energetic, potentially promising. And yet Ariel Sharon brushes away Amram Mitzna as though he were air.
‘Sharon has been crushed for over a month under an unending series of corruption affairs, each one of which, in certain countries in the world, would have put an end to his political career long ago, but he is the rising force. Whereas Mitzna, who could not have dreamed of better conditions for a surprising upset, is on the sure road downhill.’
But there is little mystery behind Labour’s woes. In the years since the Oslo peace agreement, the Israeli electorate has moved further to the right, falling out of love with the Left so much that, where once as many as 40% of Israelis might have identified themselves as left-wing, now barely 20% would make that claim.
Israelis will tell you they are ‘disappointed’ with Labour, which they blame for getting them into the present conflict with the Palestinians for promising too much and asking too little.
Many of the same Israelis will tell you that they support Mitzna’s policies — but, paradoxically, only as long as it was not Labour who presented them. For ‘disappointment’ read a disaffection that is so visceral that it amounts to a rejection of anything that is branded ‘Labour’ or Left.
‘Labour has become a negative brand name,’ said Tel Aviv University’s Ephraim Yaar, who has studied Israeli political affiliations. ‘Even if the Israeli public supported many of the things that Labour stands for, it simply does not trust it to deliver. A second issue is the failure of Labour to produce from within a political leader with charisma and appeal to go up against Sharon.’
All of which leaves Mitzna hoping for a miracle. But it looks as though his chance has come and gone. His latest, and perhaps last, throw of the dice has been to declare that Labour would not join a government of national unity.
It is a gamble that has drawn criticism: for ‘negativity’ from those who favour a unified government, and from senior members of Mitzna’s own party who believe his declaration amounts to electoral suicide.
Sharon has pushed ahead again, by dint of letting it be known that he will answer no further questions about the police investigation into his finances. Remarkably, the electorate is happy with that.
Indeed, such are Mitzna’s problems now that former Labour Prime Minister Shimon Peres was forced to deny that he would replace Mitzna before the elections. ‘I support Mitzna and am not getting involved in any deals,’ he said. In the murky world of Israeli politics that translates as ‘Mitzna, watch your back.’ – Guardian Unlimited Â