Prominent Dove Pushed Out of Israeli Parliament

Choosing its candidates for parliament, Israel’s moderate Labor Party on Tuesday pushed out its most prominent dove, Yossi Beilin, and topped its list with several former generals.

Beilin, a political maverick, was an architect of the 1993 Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians and was the first to advocate Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon years before it pulled out in May 2000.

Other prominent Labor liberals won spots on the party list that appeared to assure their election. Beilin’s ouster was attributed to his bitter feud with the previous Labor leader, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who kept Labor in a coalition with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s hard-line Likud Party for 20 months.

Under its new leader, Amram Mitzna, Labor is advocating an Israeli withdrawal from much of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip, either as part of a peace deal or as a unilateral step if negotiations fail.

However, Israel’s electorate has been moving to the right after more than two years of fighting with the Palestinians, and polls show Labor finishing a distant second to Likud in the Jan. 28 general election.

Labor faces the prospect of losing about six of its 26 seats in the 120-member parliament, and the fight was fierce for the top 20 spots on the party list. Beilin came in 39th. The first three spots were reserved for Mitzna, Ben-Eliezer and outgoing Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.