Jeremy's Knesset Insider

To understand what is happening to the Labor Party today one must understand what happened in January 2011. On January 17, 2011, Defense Minister and Labor Party Leader Ehud Barak announced that he was splitting the party and forming the new Independence Faction along with senior Labor members such as Matan Vilnai and Shalom Simhon. Barak would remain Defense Minister for the rest of Netanyahu’s second term. Labor initially broke down into complete chaos after the split left the party with just 8 seats. Labor eventually united behind Shelly Yacimovich, but the party almost divided into additional pieces.

Labor had dropped to an historic low of 13 seats in the 2009 election. Labor, the party that founded the country and produced seven Prime Ministers, had been regulated to middle-party status with their fourth place finish. Barak, who was Defense Minister in Olmert’s outgoing government, retained his position as he signed a coalition agreement on Labor’s behalf to join Netanyahu’s government. There was opposition in the party to this move and calls for a leadership race were immediate. Barak was able to delay the race with various excuses, the last of which was a commitment to hold the race after the vote on the Netanyahu government’s biannual 2011-2012 budget. With the biannual budget in the books the government was safe through 2013. It was now possible for Barak to split off with over a third of the Labor MKs and remain in the coalition. Interestingly, Barak built the Independence Party on the framework of the defunct Third Way Party, which had also previously split from Labor, and later joined Netanyahu’s first government in the 1990s.

Although the move was great for Barak personally, it was a major blow for the Labor Party.  Amir Peretz, Eitan Cabel, and two other MKs conducted their own meetings and prepared to split off from the party. Shelly Yacimovich, Isaac Herzog, and two other MKs decided they would stay in the party no matter what. These two groups of four MKs clashed with each other for days in public and in private. It seemed that the two groups of four MKs were fighting more with each other than with the five MKs that had just split off. Walking the Knesset corridors at this time provided interesting interactions that a gentleman cannot share.

On January 23 former Minister Michael Harish was brought out of political retirement and named interim leader. Internal agreements were reached, and Peretz agreed not to split the party further after receiving an agreement to push off the primary until September and launch a membership drive that would allow new party members to vote in the upcoming leadership election. The membership drive was viewed as particularly important for Peretz because rumors had surfaced he had moved his supporters to the Kadima Party and needed time to bring them back to Labor to be eligible to vote for him in the primary.

A number of candidates considered running for party leadership. Seven candidates announced their candidacy, but only four remained on the ballot by the time the voting started. Yacimovich received 32%, and Peretz received 31% in the first round. Herzog, who had finished in third place, backed Yacimovich in the second round of voting, which helped lead Yacimovich to a 54%-45% victory over Peretz. Harish handed over the keys of the party to Yacimovich in late September 2011, and about 16 months later Labor would win 15 seats in the January 2013 general election.

Most Zionist Union MKs have not found a reason to publicly defend their boss and Leader of the Opposition Isaac Herzog, who is fighting for his political life. There is no political benefit in defending a senior figure under the shadow of a corruption probe at a time when a former Prime Minister and President are both sitting in Israeli jail cells. The pressure for Herzog to set a date for the next Labor Leadership Primary is growing, and a long list of potential candidates are preparing for the upcoming campaign season. Herzog, who was already facing intense pressure before the scandal hit, is adamant he is innocent and is trying even harder than before to delay the leadership race. Herzog’s struggle to push off the leadership race can be compared to Barak’s situation.

The chatter and attention the upcoming Labor Party Primary is receiving in the media and among the political insider circles is quite impressive given the fact this is a party that has failed to win an election in the 21^st century.  The long list of candidates that plan on seeking the Labor leadership is even more impressive if you note Lapid’s rise in the polls that has demoted Labor to third place. The long list also resembles the 2011 situation at this point in time.

A recent Panels Poll, conducted after Herzog’s probe was made public, found that only 15% of the Israeli public will consider voting for the Zionist Union ticket in the next election. The general public thinks the Zionist Union should focus on a social agenda (59%) more than security and diplomacy issues (35%). That finding is good for Yacimovich and bad for Herzog. More bad news for Herzog is that the top answer on the poll question of what the Zionist Union’s main problem is was leadership. Panels found that Herzog measured the worst out of the six leaders polled in terms of leader motivation. Only 31% think that Herzog is motivated by the national interest, while 47% believe Herzog is motivated by personal interest. Another Panels poll revealed that 29% of Zionist Union voters from the previous election are now considering not voting for the list again because of Herzog’s probe. Labor was facing similarly tough polling numbers leading up to January 2011.

The first five Labor Party leaders (Eshkol, Meir, Rabin, Peres and Barak) all became Prime Minister, and one can count seven if one includes the pre-merger years of Ben-Gurion and Sharet. Labor’s problem didn’t start with Herzog, nor did it start in January 2011. Labor has been fading since Ariel Sharon defeated Barak in the special Prime Minister election of 2001. The party has been plagued by splits, scandals, and leadership elections that occur about every two years on average.

The Zionist Union of today is a relatively inexperienced party on the political level. 17 of their 24 MKs are either in their first or second terms, including nine rookie MKs. That means just seven MKs with more than three or so years of political experience as an MK.  Three of those seven are former Kadima MKs Tzipi Livni, Yoel Hasson and Nachman Shai, who are viewed more as politicians who made clever political maneuvers than members of Labor’s ideological base. The other four MKs are considered leaders of the most significant camps in the party. Additionally, they are the four surviving members of the eight Labor MKs of January 2011.

Amir Peretz is not just the most senior MK serving in the Labor Party; he is the most senior MK serving in the Knesset. He was elected for the first time in the same 1988 class that produced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Appropriations Committee Chairman Moshe Gafni, Defense & Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tzachi Hanegbi and MK Benny Begin. Peretz has had a complicated relationship with Labor. He split off from Labor in 1999 and created the One Nation Party. He merged his party back into Labor in 2004. Peretz, a former Histadrut trade union federation leader, defeated Shimon Peres in the 2005 Labor Party primary and led Labor to 19 seats in the 2006 general election. Peretz joined Olmert’s government as Defense Minister and served in that crucial post during the Second Lebanon War. Peretz remained in the party after losing the leadership in 2007. In 2011 Peretz ran again for party leadership after flirting with Kadima, considering splitting Labor, or creating a new party, and lost. He left Labor and joined Livni for the 2013 elections. After replacing Mitzna as Livni’s number 2, Peretz left Livni’s Party and rejoined the Labor Party this past September. He has been around long enough during his political career to have complicated relationships, as both an enemy and a friend to the remaining senior Labor leaders depending on the era in question. He is expected to run again.

Eitan Cabel was first elected to Knesset in 1996, the start of Netanyahu’s first term as Prime Minister. He has outlasted all of his Labor colleagues with the exception of Peretz. Cabel is the only one of the current veteran Labor MKs without a previous tenure in Kadima not to be elected Labor’s Leader. Cabel has flirted with the idea of running for party leadership in the past but has never pulled the trigger. It is possible that he will run this time, but it is also possible that he makes a deal to be the main supporter of a different candidate in return for something on the outside such as the Histadrut trade union federation leadership, a position he once ran for and lost.

Shelly Yacimovich, a former journalist, joined the party for the 2006 election. Peretz was leader at the time and responsible for bringing her in, and one could say that she was his most loyal supporter during that period. The relationship soured when Yacimovich backed Ehud Barak over Ami Ayalon in the second round of the June 2007 Labor Party Leadership Primary. Peretz was heavily invested in Ayalon’s campaign and he took Yacimovich’s support of Barak as a sign of betrayal. Yacimovich defeated her former mentor in the second round of the 2011 Leadership Election thanks to support from Herzog. Peretz attacked her publicly and joined Livni’s party ahead of the 2013 general election. Yacimovich led Labor to 15 seats in 2013, and she would lose to Herzog in the primary held later that year. It is almost certain she will run in the upcoming Labor Leadership Election.

Isaac Herzog, a member of the Herzog dynasty, was first elected to Knesset in 2003. His most significant post before entering the Knesset was Government Secretary in Ehud Barak’s cabinet from 1999-2001. Herzog served as a minister during his first three terms as part of the Sharon, Olmert and Netanyahu governments. Although he finished third in the 2011 Labor Leadership Primary he was able to pick the winning horse in the second round in Yacimovich. He would later defeat her in the 2013 primary election and become party leader.

In the first week of December 2014, Labor was in third place with 13.4 seats according to the Knesset Jeremy Weekly Average #1 of 12 polls from 9 polling companies. If polling under the 15 seats Yacimovich had won just two years ago wasn’t bad enough, Labor was running closer to fourth place than to second. Three polls from that week had them down at 12 seats which would be under the previous low of Barak’s 13 seats from 2009. It looked like Herzog’s political career was nearing its end and that the Labor party might cement itself with a mid-level party status. Then, Herzog pulled a rabbit out of his hat. The agreement to run a joint ticket with Livni’s party brought his number up to 22.2 seats according to the Knesset Jeremy Weekly Average #2. The Zionist Union ticket would win 24 seats in the election and become the second largest Faction in the Knesset.

It has been over a year since the election, and the Zionist Union’s numbers have dropped. In most polls Labor is polling third, behind Yesh Atid. The joint ticket with Livni is no longer popular internally and the alliance’s continuation is in doubt. Behind-the-scenes, Herzog is perceived by many to be weak, both as leader of Labor and as leader of the opposition. A friend of mine in the opposition called the Zionist Union – “24 MKs that act as if they are in 24 different parties”. Many Labor MKs are silent in public, but some MKs are attacking Herzog directly and others are attacking him indirectly by praising him before expressing their nuanced opinions.

Many of the candidates realize that a membership drive can help them, so they are not looking to oust Herzog quite yet. Erel Margalit, the first candidate to start his campaign, produced a campaign video asking for new members to sign up to the party to support his candidacy. Margalit understands, based on the previous primary results, that he needs to create a new movement that will produce a fresh crop of primary voters unaffiliated with the “big four” if he wants to win. Peretz, who has recently rejoined Labor, is also sure to benefit from a long primary process that will allow him to go through his old lists of supporters and bring them back into the party. Peretz has run for the leadership position many times before and has always finished in double digits, important in a large crop of candidates that will almost definitely produce a second round of voting. Although candidates such as Yacimovich or Cabel might not favor a membership drive it is important for other outside candidates who remain undecided such as Ashkenazi, Huldai, Gantz or others.

Some view Herzog’s recent statements as a move to the right that would allow him to enter the Netanyahu Government as the leader of Labor or perhaps the leader of another split movement. In this scenario Herzog could return to a ministry office and stay there until 2019 if the 2017-2018 biannual budget is passed.

Another option is that Herzog is doing what he can to buy as much time as possible, by convincing the other leadership candidates that his lame-duck months as leader is in their best interest, hoping that time is what is needed to make his possible legal troubles go away. In this scenario Herzog either pulls out another rabbit from his hat like he did in December 2014 or he serves as a de-facto interim leader until he is replaced.

The best way to answer the question on the future of the Zionist Union Faction and the Labor Party is to revisit January 2011. However, the question remains if Herzog is Ehud Barak or Michael Harish.

I’ve stressed this so many times before. When we ask in today’s polls “What party would you vote for if the election was today?” – It is a misleading question. It is misleading because of the many undecided factors of the next election. There are many parameters that are unknown.

There are a few parameters that we do know. We know that the next election will probably take place before the scheduled date, Tuesday November 5, 2019. We know that seven of the ten Faction leaders – Netanyahu, Lapid, Liberman, Kahlon, Bennett, Gal-On, Litzman – are expected to lead their lists into the next election. The misleading poll question is a great way to gauge short-term public opinion. However, to really answer the poll question we have to understand that there are many parameters that are unknown.

We don’t know when the elections will be. We don’t know who will win the Labor Primary Elections. We don’t know what the future of The Joint List holds. We don’t know what will happen in Shas.  We don’t know if Gideon Saar will make a comeback. We don’t know what Gaby Ashkenazi or Benny Gantz will do. We don’t know what Knesset merges and splits are ahead of us. We don’t know if there will be another celebrity candidate that decides to create another ‘star party’. We don’t know how the lists of the Knesset parties will look like. There are many other parameters that can be added to this list.

Let’s examine a few of the various questions and options faction by faction:

Likud

What we know: Netanyahu ran unopposed and will lead Likud into the next general election.
What we don’t know: Will Likud run on a joint ticket with other parties, such as Kulanu, to ensure a Phase 1 victory?

Zionist Union

What we know: There will be a Labor Party Leader primary before the next general election.

What we don’t know: Who wins the Labor primary? What happens with the Livni Party alliance? Who are the new additions?

Joint List

What we know: The four major Arab parties passed the threshold because of the Joint List.

What we don’t know: Can they pull it off again?

Yesh Atid

What we know: Lapid will lead Yesh Atid into the next general election and will select his MK list.

What we don’t know: Will there be a joint ticket? Can Lapid add a big star like Ashkenazi or Gantz?

Kulanu

What we know: Kahlon likes the Finance Ministry and wants to stay there.

What we don’t know:  Does Kahlon go with Likud or Yesh Atid?

Bayit Yehudi

What we know: Bennett is expected to lead the party into the next elections.

What we don’t know: Will Tekuma run with Bayit Yehudi or will they join a new right-wing alliance?

Shas

What we know: The Shas educational system produces at least 3 seats no matter what.

What we don’t know: Who will lead Shas into the next election? Deri, Cohen or Atias? Does Yishai run with someone else or perhaps returns to Shas as #2 to Atias?

UTJ

What we know: Everything is about turnout for them.

What we don’t know: What turnout will be?

Yisrael Beitenu

What we know: Liberman has real issues with Netanyahu.

What we don’t know: Will his party run as part of a larger alliance? Will he choose Netanyahu over the center-left candidate?

Meretz

What we know: The threshold will be an issue for them in the next election, especially if people feel there is a real shot at defeating Netanyahu.

What we don’t know: How many people will vote Meretz because they can’t give their vote to someone else?

There are many undecided factors that need to be resolved before the next election. Polls are still important because they are the best tool we possess to measure the short-term public opinion picture. Many of the factors that need to be resolved before the next election will lean heavily on the data of these polls.

As we get closer many of these factors will be resolved and the picture will become more clear.

One of those cardinal rules in western world politics is if you want to win an election to lead your country you must win the center. In a two-party system that usually means politicians will go to either extreme to win a primary and will walk-it-back to the center to win the general election. In a multi-party system, such as Israel, it is much easier. You can simply create your own party, label yourself as center, and skip the primary.

There is an unofficial rule in Israeli politics that to be a serious Prime Minister candidate you must have first served in one of the top three ministries: Defense, Foreign or Finance. There is a good argument for this unofficial rule since the only exceptions are the first Prime Minister and Defense Minister David Ben-Gurion and the long-time Opposition Leader Menachem Begin.

Sharett, Meir, Shamir and Barak were all Foreign Ministers before they became Prime Minister. Eshkol and Olmert were first Finance Ministers. Peres was a Defense Minister before Prime Minister. Sharon had served previously as both Defense and Foreign. Rabin inherited his first term from Meir, but had Defense Ministry experience before he won an elected term. Netanyahu had experience as Deputy Foreign Minister before winning his first election and had previous Foreign and Finance Minister experience before he won his second.

This week two public polls were released. One measured public opinion on Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu party. The other poll offered a fictional scenario poll in which a group of centrist figures would win 23 seats to 22 for the Likud. This fictional poll is the first one published that does not have Likud in first place so the pundits have been having a field day with it. The list, which was read out in a random order without naming the leader of the list, would include the unlikely trio of Netanyahu’s former Likud #2s Kahlon and Gideon Sa’ar, along with former IDF COS Gabi Ashkenazi.

One poll was discouraging for Kahlon’s future, and the second poll was promising for him.

Moshe Kahlon first ran for Knesset for Likud in 1999 and was placed #38 on the Likud Knesset list that won 19 seats under Benjamin Netanyahu. After Ariel Sharon defeated Ehud Barak in 2001 Kahlon was appointed to a senior position in hardline-Minister Uzi Landau’s Homeland Security Ministry. Kahlon improved to #25 for the 2003 Likud list led by Prime Minister Sharon that would win 38 seats and Kahlon was elected to the Knesset in a rookie class that would produce two future Likud #2s Gideon Sa’ar and Gilad Erdan. Kahlon sided with Landau and became one of the “Likud rebel MKs” against Ariel Sharon and his disengagement plan.  Kahlon was considered a hawk and frequently expressed his opposition to a Palestinian State. Kahlon was the surprise of the 2006 Likud primary and received first place. For the 2006 Election Kahlon was #3 on the Likud Knesset list behind the reserved spots for Benjamin Netanyahu and Silvan Shalom. Netanyahu appointed Kahlon as Chairman of the powerful Likud Central Committee, and Kahlon won re-election to the important post in 2008. During his second term Kahlon was appointed Knesset Economy Committee Chairman, the highest position given to the opposition Likud by the Olmert government. Many of his internal rivals struck political deals to weaken him and Kahlon dropped in the next primaries to fifth place and was #6 on the 2009 Likud Knesset list that won 27 seats and returned Benjamin Netanyahu to the Prime Minister’s Office. Netanyahu handed his ally Kahlon the Communications portfolio and later on gave him a second portfolio, the Labor and Welfare Ministry, after Isaac Herzog resigned the post.

Kahlon was considered very popular in public opinion polls, frequently receiving the top mark among all ministers thanks to his cellphone reform, yet he decided to take a break from politics and not run in the 2013 election. Suddenly rumors spread that Kahlon was considering running on a new list for 2013 and various scenario polls conducted by the television stations increased speculation. After an initial silence, Kahlon announced he was not running on any list in 2013 and he appeared in Likud TV commercials. However, already before the 2013 election cycle was finished, there were rumors that Kahlon was preparing himself for the next cycle to run at the head of a new center party, similarly to what Lapid had just done.

Kahlon wanted to be a Prime Minister candidate, and he made the calculation that Netanyahu was not going to give him one of the top three ministries unless he formed his own party. This was reinforced when the new center party Yesh Atid won 19 seats out of nowhere and Lapid received the Finance Ministry. Sa’ar, Likud’s #2 for the second straight election was actually demoted from Education to the Interior Ministry. Kahlon was ahead of Sa’ar and Erdan, his 2003 Likud classmates, in realizing the only way to really force Netanyahu’s hand was to create his own party and be a coalition partner capable of collapsing the government.

There is no long-term future for “center” parties. Some of these parties last a term and others have lasted as many as three. It is the same problem each time. The party is centered (pun intended) on one popular individual and after that individual leaves the party collapses. There are other problems of course. The MKs of center parties are usually chosen by the popular individual, instead of democratic primaries, and with that kind of power the popular individual usually leads to selecting unthreatening personalities that frequently turn out to be completely clueless and/or useless lawmakers. These MKs are subject to turning on their former boss and examining options to jump to another party if their current party is crashing in the polls. Another problem is that when it comes to voting on legislation there is no “center button”, there is a decision that must be made, for or against. In Israel events change rapidly, and it is almost impossible to stay in the center without constant flip-flopping, and that usually leads to untrustworthy and unfavorable numbers that prevent you from doing any long-term planning.

People look at Kadima when they say that the center can maintain long-term success. After all Kadima was represented in Knesset for close to ten years through three elections and by three different leaders. Ehud Olmert led the center party Kadima to 29 seats in 2006 and became the first centrist Prime Minister. Of course it was Ariel Sharon’s party that Olmert inherited. Kadima’s next leader Tzipi Livni failed to maintain Olmert’s coalition, and couldn’t create a new one afterwards either, despite winning Phase 1 in the 2009 election with 28 seats. The thing is that Livni’s Kadima was not Olmert’s Kadima, not really. There was a lot of turnover, a lot of new faces and MK Ze’ev Elkin decided that he’d rather move to the Likud than remain in a Livni-led Kadima. When Shaul Mofaz won the Kadima leadership it changed the party again. Kadima fell from 28 seats to two. Of course to be fair Mofaz’s Kadima wasn’t Livni’s Kadima either. Livni in fact had seven Kadima MKs break off and create a new party for her. Other Kadima MK refugees ran to the Likud and a few ran in the Labor Party primaries. One Kadima MK even tried to run as part of an Arab list.

After raising the electoral threshold to 3.25% the 20th Knesset tied a record for electing just ten lists. I’ve gone on record predicting that the next Knesset will most likely elect a single-digit number of lists for the first time as the Israeli political landscape in my opinion consolidates instead of splits. This might be the first Knesset term in a while where there is no “new white knight savior” candidate. Instead we might have a new alliance list that is made up of many personalities and parties that all want to capture the center vote without actually having to be in the center.

Kahlon’s numbers are dropping. He has not received double digits in any poll conducted since he joined the coalition. Housing prices are not going down, he has not taken on the banks as promised, his flip-flop on the natural gas deal has hurt his credibility, and he is perceived by many as the weak ineffective fig leaf of the coalition. The good news for Kahlon is that he still owns ten seats, he is sitting in the prestigious Finance Ministry, and he is the senior coalition partner of the government. Kahlon will have time to see his current reforms through after agreeing to a two-year-budget for 2017 and 2018.

As for his future, the likelihood that Kahlon runs alone in the next election is small. The Kulanu Party is simply not conducting themselves as a party that is seeking re-election. Kulanu is completely absent in the field and seems to be going through the motions instead of putting down roots.

Kahlon will probably do what previous center party leaders have done before him – try to make a deal. Kahlon will no doubt try to get the deal Tzipi Livni made where Herzog appointed her to #2 on a joint list where she was allowed to keep her own independent party and appoint her own people. Despite the current scenario poll, a Livni-type deal is something that today would only be worthwhile for Kahlon if it came from Netanyahu or Lapid. In fact, Kahlon negotiated possible joint lists with both of them before the previous election but realized he would have more power long-term if he ran with his own party now and sold high when he has the party funding of a ten-seat-party that didn’t spend much money during the previous term. Most of the Kulanu MKs would prefer Likud to Yesh Atid and returning to the Likud makes more sense for Kahlon as long as Netanyahu and his allies remain strong in polling. Netanyahu has already made a few deals to place a different party head at #2 and run on a joint list, most recently in the 2013 election that Kahlon decided to sit out. Even if Kahlon does prefer Lapid, Netanyahu is older than Lapid, and that is a factor for anyone who wants to be Prime Minister one day.

What about our weekend scenario poll? Kahlon has good relations with Sa’ar, and he views him as an ideal #2. However, if Sa’ar wouldn’t agree to be Netanyahu’s #2, why would he agree to be Kahlon’s? Ashkenazi, a former IDF COS, does not seem like a #2 type of player. Sa’ar is more popular than Kahlon, but Kahlon won’t agree to hand his party over to someone else. Attaching Sa’ar’s name to scenario polls makes for interesting conversation, but he will most likely wait for the next Likud leadership election or, the less likely option, start his own party as Kahlon did before him.

Our scenario poll does teach us that Lapid loses his standing the minute there is a better perceived alternative to Netanyahu. If Lapid had convinced Livni or Kahlon to be his #2 in the previous election he would most likely be the leader of the second largest list and the official Opposition Leader right now. Lapid is already inheriting Kulanu and Zionist Union voters, but he might lose them if he doesn’t include their leaders. As Herzog’s grip weakens the Zionist Union MKs are becoming increasingly independent and a chunk of them might break off and join a new center alliance with or without Herzog.

So, we have a group of politicians who are looking to the center for their political survival, and Kahlon is an important key for many of them. Many of Kahlon’s opponents know there is likely a scenario where they will need him and his ten seats of party funding to ensure their survival. It is a real dilemma for these figures if they should publicly attack Kahlon or not. If you attack Kahlon too much you might be sending him straight into the hands of Netanyahu. If you don’t attack him enough he might use you as a bargaining chip before jumping into Netanyahu’s arms anyways. For now the tactic some are using is attacking the Kulanu Party instead of Kahlon directly.

There probably is no future for the Kulanu Party, but there is a future for Moshe Kahlon.