JERUSALEM — Hoping to wrest power from the ruling Likud bloc, Israel’s left-wing Labor Party on Tuesday chose a reserve general who favors compromise with the Palestinians as its candidate for prime minister in the January national elections.
“The majority of Israel is seeking a different way. There’s no security. There’s no economy. There’s nothing,” said Amram Mitzna, 57, declaring victory close to midnight as votes were still being counted in the Labor Party primary.
The mayor of Haifa, who was making his first bid in national politics, was headed to Tel Aviv to a victory celebration at his party’s headquarters.
Early results and exit polls reported by both major Israeli television stations showed Haifa Mayor Mitzna, a dovish former West Bank commander, resoundingly defeating the more hawkish Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the present party leader, in a primary.
A Channel 2 exit poll by the polling group Dahaf Institute reported that 57 percent of party members voted for Mitzna, compared with 35 percent for Ben-Eliezer and 8 percent for the third candidate, parliament member Haim Ramon.
Ben-Eliezer congratulated Mitzna in a phone call, and called for party unity.
Mitzna vowed this week to pull Israeli troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip, and has said he would negotiate with the Palestinians even if violence persists.
Likud Party members will choose between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 74, and Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 53, on Nov. 28. Then the real campaigns will begin.
Under Israel’s electoral revision, voters no longer elect the prime minister. Instead, the party that receives the most seats in the 120-member parliament, the Knesset, and is seen as most likely to build a ruling coalition gets the opportunity to lead Israel.
Labor, for years Israel’s dominant party, has been lagging behind Likud since the 1993 Oslo peace accords with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat broke down in violence. And there is no harmony in the party on Mitzna’s proposals to return to negotiations with Arafat, even in the face of suicide bombings, and to unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza if the Palestinian talks fail.
© 2002, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.