2017 Israeli Labor Party Leadership Election

By mid-2017 the Israeli Labor Party was in serious electoral difficulty. The party had not led a governing coalition in eighteen years, had slipped to fourth or fifth place in some opinion polls, and was projected in some reports to lose as many as half of its 24 Knesset seats to Yesh Atid.[4] Labor had replaced eight chairpersons in the preceding twenty years, a pattern that underscored chronic instability at the top.[6]

The electoral alliance known as the Zionist Camp — formed before the 2015 elections between Labor, under Isaac Herzog, and Tzipi Livni's Hatnuah — had won 24 Knesset seats combined, including 19 belonging to Labor, while Likud won 30.[7] Internal divisions deepened in 2016 when Herzog explored joining Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government, and all seven candidates who entered the 2017 primary pledged to defeat Netanyahu's Likud at the next election.[4]

Avi Gabbay, the eventual winner, was born in 1967 in a Jerusalem immigrant camp, the son of Moroccan immigrants and the seventh of eight children.[8][9] He studied economics and business administration at Hebrew University, briefly worked at the Ministry of Finance, joined Bezeq in 1999, and became chief executive officer of the company — Israel's largest telecommunications firm — in 2007, a post he held until 2013.[5][8] After leaving Bezeq he entered politics, working with Moshe Kahlon to develop the Kulanu party and serving as minister of environmental protection following the 2015 elections.[8] He resigned from the government roughly a year later, in response to Prime Minister Netanyahu's appointment of Avigdor Lieberman as defense minister, a decision that also caused a break between Gabbay and Kahlon.[10] Gabbay joined Labor in December 2016 and declared his candidacy for the party leadership.[9]

Seven candidates received votes in the first round.[1] The field included two with Moroccan backgrounds: Amir Peretz, a former Labor chairman, former defense minister, and former union leader from Sderot who was born in Morocco, and Gabbay, a former telecommunications executive with no prior elected office.[11] The other major candidates were incumbent chairman Isaac Herzog — son of former Israeli president Chaim Herzog and nephew of Abba Eban — Erel Margalit, and Omer Bar-Lev, along with minor candidates Avner Ben-Zaken and Hod Karubi.[1]

Gabbay campaigned on technocratic governance, proposing that professionals rather than politicians hold the defense, finance, housing, health, and education portfolios.[12] He argued that Labor needed a new face, claimed he could recover seats lost to Yesh Atid, and said he had registered 4,000 new members to the party.[12] Rival Erel Margalit claimed to have signed up 11,000 of the party's approximately 52,000 eligible members.[12]

At a national leadership forum, Gabbay advocated political change, separation from the Palestinians, a two-state solution, and defensible borders alongside a demilitarized Palestinian state.[13] He argued that Israel had lost its way during the preceding decade, which he attributed to a small group — approximately three percent of the population, in his characterization — that valued land more than people, and contended that changing Likud alone was insufficient and that the governing system itself needed to change.[13]

The contest was widely framed as a struggle between established Labor figures and candidates whose Moroccan or broader Middle Eastern heritage symbolized an effort to broaden the party's appeal beyond its traditional Ashkenazi base.[11] Former Labor leader Shelly Yachimovich backed Gabbay.[6] Herzog and Erel Margalit backed Peretz in the runoff.[3]

The primary's first round was held on July 4, 2017, after the originally announced date of July 3 was shifted slightly.[14] Of approximately 52,505 eligible members, 30,995 voted, producing a turnout of nearly 60 percent — substantially higher than the 52 percent recorded in the 2013 Herzog–Yachimovich contest.[1]

No candidate exceeded the 40 percent threshold required for an outright victory. Peretz finished first with 10,141 votes (32.7 percent), and Gabbay finished second with 8,395 votes (27.08 percent), leaving Gabbay nearly 2,000 votes behind heading into the runoff.[1] Incumbent chairman Herzog finished third with 5,204 votes, followed closely by Margalit with 4,997; Bar-Lev received 2,147 votes, while Ben-Zaken and Karubi received 56 and eight votes respectively.[1]

Turnout was especially high in the kibbutz sector and low among Arab party members — a pattern noted as disadvantageous to Peretz, who had conducted a membership drive among Arab voters.[1] The first round ended Herzog's four-year tenure as chairman.[1] The computerized voting system experienced brief outages in Rosh Ha'ayin and the Arab village of Hura, and Jerusalem voters reported technical difficulties, though Labor's secretary-general Eran Hermoni said the usual allegations of forged ballots and vote tampering were absent on election day.[1]

Gabbay won the July 10 runoff with 16,080 votes (52.4 percent) against Peretz's 14,734 votes (47.6 percent), overturning the first-round deficit in what was widely characterized as a major upset.[2][3] In his victory remarks, Gabbay dedicated the result to people who had given up hope in the party and declared that Labor was beginning a path toward a new government.[2]

Because Gabbay was not a sitting Knesset member, his election as party chairman did not make him leader of the parliamentary opposition. He reached an arrangement with Herzog under which Herzog retained the Knesset opposition role while Gabbay led the party.[9] Herzog congratulated Gabbay after the result despite having backed Peretz in the runoff.[3]

The campaign and voting process generated a series of allegations. Candidate Dina Dayan alleged that Arab residents had been registered as Labor members without their knowledge, and claimed Peretz supporters distributed Rami Levy grocery vouchers to registered members; she also said a Peretz associate pressured her to withdraw a formal petition.[15] Candidate Amiram Levin sought to disqualify approximately 14,000 members, Gabbay requested credit-card checks for possible fraud, and incumbent Herzog alleged that a cyberattack had altered voter-registration data.[15] Peretz denied the allegations, called reports about registered Arab members "fake news," and Labor secretary-general Eran Hermoni rejected the accusations as false claims intended to postpone the primary.[15]

A 2018 State Comptroller report subsequently found campaign-finance deficiencies involving several candidates. Gabbay was fined NIS 90,000 for spending approximately NIS 500,000 above the NIS 1.4 million legal limit and reportedly spent more than NIS 1 million of his own money across the two rounds.[16] Herzog was fined NIS 60,000 for exceeding the limit by NIS 400,000, Margalit was fined NIS 30,000, and Levin was fined NIS 20,000; Dayan received a NIS 750 fine for a separate reporting violation.[16]

Gabbay assumed the Labor chairmanship at a moment when observers speculated that his Mizrahi background and centrist positions might broaden the party's appeal.[5] Because he was not an MK, Herzog initially retained the parliamentary opposition leadership. After Herzog left the Knesset to lead the Jewish Agency in 2018, Gabbay had to select an MK to head the opposition; Tzipi Livni subsequently filled the post.[6][9] Gabbay affirmed positions including a two-state solution, bipartisan U.S.–Israel relations, humanitarian aid to Gaza contingent on an end to Palestinian incitement, and restoring the compromise on pluralistic prayer at the Western Wall.[13][17]

The Zionist Camp partnership continued under Gabbay until January 1, 2019, when he dissolved it, ending Labor's alliance with Tzipi Livni's Hatnuah.[7] A reported increase in popular support for Labor immediately following Gabbay's election did not last.[5] In the April 2019 election, Labor won only six seats — described as its lowest result ever — and Gabbay subsequently stepped down, with Amir Peretz, his defeated 2017 rival, elected to replace him.[7]

Contemporary assessments treated the election as a possible attempt to broaden Labor's appeal through a leader from a working-class Moroccan Jewish family with a business background and centrist positions. The Congressional Research Service explicitly presented that prospect as observer speculation and later noted that Labor's polling increase after Gabbay's victory did not last.[5] Labor's six-seat result in April 2019 provided a later measure of the limits of that anticipated realignment.[7]