Israel’s Labor Party Rent by Power Struggle

Israel’s ruling Labor Party expelled three of its members of Parliament on Thursday in an internal power struggle that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin warned could lead to his government’s downfall and Labor’s defeat at the subsequent election.

Bitterly attacking former Health Minister Haim Ramon for challenging his leadership, Rabin said the insurgents were not only undermining the coalition government but also its efforts to achieve peace with Israel’s Arab neighbors.

In the short term, the expulsions mean that Rabin’s government will be living from vote to vote in the Knesset, making it vulnerable to challenges from Likud and other right-wing parties on a range of issues, not only the peace accords.

They leave the Labor Party with 41 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, and reduce Rabin’s governing coalition to 53, making it more dependent on the support of five members from small Arab and Communist parties.

Despite Rabin’s warning about the danger to the peace negotiations, the battle is not over his approach to peace--Ramon and his supporters are more dovish than the prime minister--but for control of the country’s 1.8-million-member trade union movement and the power base it offers for the next parliamentary election, due within two years.

Ramon, other Labor Party defectors and their allies in the leftist Meretz Party and Shas, an Orthodox religious party, are fielding a list of candidates in May 10 elections for the General Federation of Workers in Israel, known in Hebrew as the Histadrut.

If the insurgents defeat official Labor candidates, taking over control of Histadrut, veterans such as Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres would be pushed aside--a radical reshaping of Israeli politics.

Expelled with Ramon from the Labor Party were Amir Peretz, chairman of the Knesset’s Labor Affairs Committee, and Shmuel Avital, chairman of the Knesset’s agricultural caucus.

The alliance of such popular young Labor politicians with Meretz and Shas suggested to Israeli political analysts that a new party, dovish on peace issues and committed to greater social democracy domestically, could emerge.

A sample of Histadrut members conducted for the newspaper Maariv this week showed Ramon’s ticket, which includes Meretz and Shas candidates, to be leading that of Histadrut Secretary General Haim Haberfeld, 51% to 10%, with Likud’s candidates getting 6%. Among the general population, 42% of those surveyed said they favored Ramon, compared to 8% for Haberfeld.