“The more time that passes, the more we’ll continue to rise, and I’m certain that I will be the one to form the next government”,A Few Minutes with Labor Leader Avi Gabbay,“The more time that passes, the more we’ll continue to rise, and I’m certain that I will be the one to form the next government”
A vi Gabbay’s meteoric rise to the head of the Zionist Union party began in May 2016 when he quit Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu party and left his cabinet position as environmental minister in the Netanyahu government to protest the prime minister’s appointment of Avigdor Lieberman as defense minister.
Gabbay’s political hiatus was short-lived. In December 2016 he announced he was joining the Zionist Union (Labor Party) and won the number-one position in that party’s July 2017 primary.
Since winning Labor’s top seed Gabbay has ruffled feathers among the party faithful saying he sees no reason to evacuate settlements in a future peace agreement with the Palestinians and with a controversial statement that the Labor Party has “forgotten what it is to be Jews.” He topped it all off by saying he would work to oust Arab MK Zouheir Bahloul from the party list for skipping the Knesset’s event marking the 70th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.
This week he made his first US visit as Labor chairman appearing at the Saban Forum as well as meeting Jewish community leaders in New York and Washington. I met him just before he returned to Israel at a time when the latest polls show that the Avi Gabbay bump that Labor received in early polls after his election has worn off.
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