Peres wins Israeli Labour election battle

Israel’s battered opposition Labour Party has chosen an old hand as its new leader, electing elder statesman Shimon Peres, the symbol of peacemaking with the Palestinians, as its chairman for one year.

Many expect Peres to try to lead his party back into Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government, restoring an unusual partnership that fell apart last November after 18 rocky months, sparking an election in which Sharon handed Labour its worst defeat in Israel’s history.

“I was chosen because of my deep belief that this party will be restored to its former glory, its historic place,” said Peres after Labour’s central committee gave him 631 votes, or 49%, last night.

Former Cabinet minister Ephraim Sneh received 359 votes and relative unknown Danny Atar got 281, with 11 blank ballots in the official count.

The 79-year-old Peres is a former prime minister and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, but he has far more prestige abroad than at home.

The peace process he championed dissolved into violence 33 months ago and is now discredited in the eyes of many Israelis, and his penchant for parliamentary manoeuvring and repeated election losses have also brought him a measure of ridicule.

He ran for prime minister five times and never won outright, and in 2000 he lost to a Likud backbencher, Moshe Katsav, in a parliamentary vote for the largely ceremonial post of Israeli president.

After one defeat, facing jeers at a party convention, Peres recounted his achievements and rhetorically demanded, “Am I a loser?” only to hear cries of “Yes! Yes!”

Despite his dismal electoral record, Peres has managed to remain an almost titanic figure in the dovish Labour Party, which favours a withdrawal from most of the West Bank and Gaza, territories Israel occupied in the 1967 war which the Palestinians want for a state.