Photo: Hans Chaim Pinn
The death of Israel’s Labor Party has been at least a decade in the making, so long that even its veteran activists aren’t surprised by the party’s demise. The party, which in its first incarnation as the Mapai ruled the country from 1948 until the Likud upset victory of 1977, gradually lost its hold on the Israeli public over a process of three decades, the end of which came last month.
After winning 44 seats in 1992, Labor was never again able to reach those heights. It continued its progressive decline after the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, with 34 seats in 1996, 26 in 1999, and 19 in 2003.
There are a number of reasons for the party’s decline. The 1996 elections saw direct elections for prime minister, with a separate ballot for party lists. That arrangement allowed voters to choose smaller parties while still having a say on the one-on-one contest for prime minister between Likud’s Binyamin Netanyahu and Labor’s Shimon Peres. After that, the decline became a purely ideological matter. Labor leader Ehud Barak, elected in 1999, failed to advance a peace process at Camp David, and then had to battle the Second Intifada. The agenda in Israel shifted from peace to security. And Labor, despite its tradition of running generals such as Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, Amram Mitzna, and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, failed to convince the public that it would do a better job of providing security for the country.
In 2006, Amir Peretz steered the party in the direction of economic and social egalitarianism, talking more about the minimum wage and social justice than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the Israeli public, scarred by the Second Intifada, preferred a party of government and chose Ehud Olmert’s Kadima. From then on, Labor became a niche party.
Create a free account to keep reading.
