Poll: Mitzna is Israel's new Labour leader

Israel’s Labour Party members tonight chose a relative newcomer to politics, former general Amram Mitzna, as their leader to challenge Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud in January elections, an exit poll showed.

The poll gave Mitzna, the dovish mayor of the coastal city of Haifa, 57% of the vote, compared to 35% for the current Labour leader, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. MP Haim Ramon was a distant third with 8%, the poll of 1,000 Labour Party members showed.