Amir Peretz

The election of Amir Peretz as Head of the Labor Party is a revolution in
Israeli politics. The revolutionary nature of this change is not as you
might think because Peretz is the Head of the Histadrut Labor Union, and
very left wing. It would be as if in the UK Brendan Barber, Head of the
Trade Union Council, had been elected head of the Labor Party in place of
Blair, which would be revolutionary enough. It represents in Israel a
return to socialist principles in the Labor Party, in other words, back to
'old Labor' not forward to 'new Labor.' Yet, in a curious way it is more
revolutionary, because Peretz is a Sephardi and furthermore a Moroccan
immigrant who comes from a development town, Sderot in the Negev, where he
was mayor for several years.
This is the real revolution, that the Labor Party, the power base of the
Ashkenazi ascendancy in Israeli politics, has been overthrown. The smart
radical children of the Yiddish-speaking East Europeans from north Tel Aviv,
have been suddenly replaced by their worst enemy, the dark skinned Sephardi
Moroccan immigrant. It's as if all the well-connected former Generals of
the IDF, Rabin, Sharon, Barak, etc. have been replaced at a stroke by an
ordinary 'man of the people.' This is almost as revolutionary as Begin
being elected PM in 1977, but not quite.
Being Head of the Labor Party, and replacing Peres, does give Peretz an
immediate hold on political decisions.
It is likely in his first meeting with Sharon that Peretz will tell Sharon
that Labor will no longer support his coalition Government, and they will
agree to hold elections in ca. 4 months time, giving themselves enough time
for an election campaign. In his campaign, Sharon will emphasize security
and his experience, but Peretz will emphasize social issues, which got him
where he is, and his intention of sweeping clean the political stables.
At first glance it should be easy for Sharon to defeat Peretz, but things
are not as simple as that. Having Peretz as their candidate for PM will
attract many Sephardim and immigrant groups to vote for Labor that have been
traditionally alienated from it for a long time. On the other hand, it
might serve to reunite Likud, by making those rebels who don't have the
ability to control the whole party becoming fearful of losing to Peretz, a
died-in-the-wool socialist. Likud might rally around Sharon, their best
candidate.
If Sharon can't wrest Likud from the rebels, he may have to form a new
centrist Party and that may take him some time. Whether or not Peres will
be part of that Party remains to be seen. While Peres would attract some
Labor members to split from Peretz, on the other hand Peres is anathema in
Likud and he might prevent some members of Likud from splitting to join
Sharon. It's a delicate balancing act. The best solution for Sharon is to
hope to keep Likud together under his own leadership, and that way Netanyahu
would have to stifle his own ambitions and hope to come out eventually as
Sharon's successor.
One worrying aspect of the situation is that the first act that Peretz did
was to rush to Rabin's grave, while people are still fresh from remembering
the tenth anniversary of his assassination, and claim (as all Labor
candidates do) his mantle. Peretz said that he will bring peace to Israel
following Rabin's policies. This will be taken to mean that Peretz intends
to go back to Oslo, that he intends to take up where Rabin and Barak left
off, and that he will make concessions to the Palestinians, since it is the
implicit faith of the left that if Israel makes enough concessions to the
Palestinians, including a State and some sovereignty over Jerusalem, that
their terrorist campaign will stop. This of course, is naive wishful
thinking, since the terrorist campaign around the world is only just really
getting started, witness the first major strike in Jordan, and they aren't
about to give it up now. The difference is that Sharon struck back at the
terrorists and refused to negotiate while terrorism continued, while all
former Labor PMs were prepared to continue to sacrifice Israeli lives to an
illusory future paradise.
Yet if one looks more closely at Rabin's stated preferences, they were far
less radical than Beilin/Peres make them appear to be. Rabin himself was
against giving up Gaza, Jerusalem or most of the West Bank. So his legacy
may not be quite as leftist as Peretz' endorsement implies. And after all,
it was Sharon who disengaged from Gaza and northern Samaria, and who has a
map that reportedly includes disengagement from large parts of the West
Bank. So it will be a very interesting campaign, hopefully with a really
clear choice.
As far as I am concerned a win for Peretz would be a disaster for Israel
both from a security and economic point of view. Let's hope the Israeli
electorate learnt a lesson from having elected Barak, an over-achiever with
no previous experience in elected office who was prepared to give away the
store and the keys too.