Once the only party that mattered, Labor got booted from power following the Yom Kippur War, and never properly rebounded until Yithak Rabin's government in the nineties. But things are not going swimmingly. According to JTA, "If elections were held today, polls show that Labor would win just 12 seats in the 120-member Knesset — barely half of the 22 seats it held under its last leader, Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and a far cry from the 46 it held under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin a decade ago."
Ramon feels he can turn that around, by offering voters a simple platform: Pull Israeli troops out of Palestinian areas and erect a physical border between Israel and the Palestinians. In vigorously outlining his plan to the Labor Party’s Central Committee in mid-May, Ramon maintained that it was “electoral gold.”
“It’s there, lying on the streets and, incredibly, no one is stooping to pick it up,” he declared. “We should pick it up.”
The quick-witted Ramon, 51, once widely touted as a future prime minister, lost ground when he bolted Labor in 1994 to set up his own Histadrut faction. Later, after he returned to Labor, he ran Peres’ lackluster losing campaign against Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996.
All that seems forgiven now, at least by the once hostile Central Committee. Come October, however, Ben- Ami, Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg and others may also decide to throw their hats into the ring.
Whoever wins will have some very big shoes to fill if he is to revive the once-dominant party founded and led by Israel’s legendary first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.
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