Peacemaker elected leader of Israel's labour party

Amram Mitzna, an unknown on the Israeli political stage a few months ago, was today facing the task of rallying his fractured Labour Party after winning the leadership election on a peace platform.

Polls, however, predicted a stinging defeat by prime minister Ariel Sharon’s hardline Likud party in January’s general elections.

The January 28 ballot could be crucial for the future of the troubled Israel-Palestinian relationship.

Reflecting Israeli despair over two years of Middle East violence, polls have consistently shown that Sharon’s party and its pro-military allies could easily form a government without the moderates of Labour, who favour resuming peace talks.

Last night Mitzna, 57, emerged from Haifa city hall, where he has served as mayor of the port city since 1994 after a military career, to take the battered party by storm.

Nearly complete results from yesterday’s voting gave Mitzna 54%, incumbent party leader Binyamin Ben-Eliezer 37% and long-time wheeler-dealer Haim Ramon about 7% of the vote, with a record 65% turnout among party members.

Ben-Eliezer, who had served as Sharon’s defence minister, took the brunt of the dissatisfaction, repudiated by his own party in favour of Mitzna, a first-time campaigner who favours far-reaching steps to disengage Israel from the Palestinians.

As the voting was in progress, Mitzna told the media that if elected prime minister, he would order an evacuation of Jewish settlers and Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.

He said Israel would have to draw its own security border along the West Bank if the Palestinians refused to compromise - positions more dovish that Ben-Eliezer’s and a sharp contrast to Sharon’s grudging acceptance of a truncated Palestinian state after years of interim stages.

Labour triggered the election call by quitting Sharon’s ”national unity” government over the issue of funding for Jewish settlements in the West Bank, but not before many voters soured on the party, both for the collapse of Israel-Palestinian peace talks it championed and for helping Sharon take ever-escalating military steps to try to stop Palestinian violence.

Meanwhile clashes continued yesterday, with five Palestinians, including a leading militant and a teenager who climbed on to an Israeli armoured vehicle, killed during an Israeli operation in the West Bank town of Tulkarem.

Ben-Eliezer’s concession speech indicated trouble ahead for the novice national politician.

Addressing his supporters at Labour Party headquarters, he hinted that he would challenge Mitzna from inside. “I plan to preserve this big camp” of supporters, he said. “We will remain together.”

The prospect of a factionalised party worried Mitzna supporters. Yossi Beilin, an architect of the Israeli-Palestinian interim peace accords and a symbol of the dovish wing of the party, warned, “I believe restoring (rival) camps to the Labour Party would be a curse.”

Sharon’s Likud members welcomed Mitzna’s victory, seeing it as a move towards a dovish line at a time when voters favour harsher policies towards the Palestinians.

Ronnie Milo, a former Likud Cabinet minister, said Mitzna would alienate centrist voters. “I think the outcome is excellent for the Likud,” he said.

Israeli citizens vote for a party, and the party leader who can form a majority coalition in the parliament becomes prime minister.

Although polls have Sharon far ahead of his rivals, they also show contradictory trends among voters, who favour both creation of a Palestinian state and tough measures to halt two years of violence.

Mitzna hoped to tap into desires for disengagement from the Palestinians to bolster sagging support for conciliatory political policies.

Nabil Abu Rdeneh, an aide to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, said the election was an internal Israeli matter. ”We welcome any Israeli leader who is going to be committed to make peace with us and work according to the signed agreements,” he said.