JERUSALEM– Amram Mitzna’s decision to resign as head of the Labor Party might actually take the party back into Ariel Sharon’s embrace.
If that happens, the more dovish wings of Labor could split, leaving the party for an alliance that former Labor legislator Yossi Beilin and Yossi Sarid, head of the left-wing Meretz Party, have been talking for months about building. Beilin even says Mitzna could lead the alliance.
Indeed, Beilin points out, if just six other Labor members of Knesset joined Mitzna, the leftist group would have 13 Knesset members to Labor’s 12, and would constitute the largest opposition faction in the parliament.
Ironically, in that case Mitzna no longer would be Labor leader but he would still be leader of the opposition.
Such a move could lead to a major realignment of political forces in Israel — and it is quite conceivable if the new Labor leadership decides to join Prime Minister Sharon’s government.
The key question is whether Sharon will be able to attract the new, temporary leadership to join his coalition. Shimon Peres, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and Ehud Barak are known to be in favor.
Mitzna, too, had said recently that he would consider joining Sharon’s government if it accepted the U.S.- backed “road map” peace plan, which calls for an end to the Israeli settlement enterprise in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
However, after being rebuffed by Mitzna for months, Sharon was in no hurry to embrace him when Mitzna’s hold on Labor clearly was becoming precarious.
First of all, though, Labor will have some hard choices to make about its leadership and direction.
Mitzna was hailed as a potential savior when, at age 57, he burst onto the national political stage eight months ago, after serving as mayor of Haifa for a decade.
The Palestinian intifada was at its height, and Labor, which had been the junior partner in Sharon’s unity government until leaving on a budgetary pretext, was struggling.
Mitzna promised to discard Sharon’s policies, immediately sit down with any Palestinian leaders and, if all else failed, unilaterally withdraw Israeli troops and settlers from the West Bank and Gaza Strip within a year.
Many Israelis hoped that Mitzna, soft-spoken and highly principled, would give Labor a new sense of purpose and help the country address its most pressing problems.
But his resignation this week dashed those hopes, and left the party worse off than at any time in its long and checkered history.
Some pundits are predicting the demise of the 70-year-old, once-dominant party. Others forecast a severe split in the ranks.
Even if none of that happens, Labor, which has fallen to just 19 seats in the 120-member Knesset, faces a long and difficult process of rehabilitation.
The circumstances and manner of Mitzna’s resignation made an already tough situation infinitely worse. In his resignation speech, he claimed leading figures in the party had never accepted his leadership, hadn’t given him a moment’s grace, and had done all they could to undermine him.
“I am ashamed of the fact that since my election, before and after the elections to the Knesset, many in the party leadership focused on me and the struggle against me rather than on the struggle for peace and justice,” he declared.
Mitzna said he had been confronted by a group of manipulative Machiavellians who put personal ambition above the general good.
“I regret this,” he said. “But I do not regret the fact that I am cut from different cloth.”
To steady the ship, most Labor leaders are now talking about appointing a temporary party leader rather than going straight into another strength-sapping leadership race.
The lone candidate for interim leader is veteran Peres, whose task would be to put things back on an even keel and smooth the way for a leadership race in about a year’s time.
There also is talk of a “collective leadership” working in unison around Peres. Labor’s secretary-general, Ophir Pines, says sadly that maybe now, after the shock of Mitzna’s resignation, the others “will get their act together.”
Many names are being bandied about as prospective candidates to eventually take over as party leader, among them former Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg, former ministers Matan Vilnai and Ben-Eliezer, and perhaps even Barak.
A lot will depend on when the race takes place, and whether Peres is indeed installed first as temporary leader.