Avi Gabbay

Gabbay was born on February 22, 1967, in Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood, the seventh of eight children of Moïse and Sara Gabbay, Jewish immigrants from Morocco.[1] He grew up in a working-class Moroccan Jewish family, and his father worked for Bezeq, the telecommunications company that Gabbay would later lead.[1][2] He attended Geulim primary school and Gymnasia Rehavia before beginning his military service.[1]

He served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces’ Intelligence Corps and reached the rank of major in the reserves.[9] After his military service, he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and an MBA at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[9] His subsequent professional career began in the Ministry of Finance, before moving into telecommunications and eventually national politics.[9]

Gabbay is married and has three children; a biographical account also places his home in Tel Aviv.[1] His interests include long-distance running and scuba diving: a 2015 profile reported that he had participated in eight marathons and had recently taken part in a dive to clean the coastline at Caesarea National Park.[10] A later biography noted that he had a tattoo depicting a runner.[1]

Gabbay worked in the Ministry of Finance’s Budget Division from 1994 to 1998, serving for approximately four and a half years before joining Bezeq.[7][9] His responsibilities included coordinating the communications team, giving him experience with the sector in which he subsequently built his business career.[9] At Bezeq, he first became a senior assistant to chief executive Ami Erel, then spent six months as vice president of management resources and three and a half years as vice president of economics and strategy.[9]

In 2003, Gabbay became chief executive of Bezeq International, a position he held for approximately four years.[9][11] He subsequently served as chief executive of Bezeq from 2007 to 2013.[1][2] This sequence took him from government budgeting through several corporate staff and management positions to the leadership of two telecommunications businesses.[9]

Before entering national politics, Gabbay chaired a committee examining the crisis at Hadassah hospital.[10] Former health minister Yael German selected him after an extensive examination of possible candidates.[10] German said that he signed the committee’s recommendations alone because others were uncomfortable with them, and she praised the recommendations as thorough and courageous.[10]

Gabbay helped Moshe Kahlon establish Kulanu in 2014, ahead of the 2015 Knesset election.[9] Although he was not elected to the Knesset, he became minister of environmental protection in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government after the election.[9][11] His ministerial priorities included a levy on supermarket plastic bags, removal of the ammonia tank in Haifa Bay and reductions in pollution from Israel Electric Corporation power stations.[11]

Early in his term, Gabbay announced plans to remove the ammonia tank threatening residents of Haifa and the Krayot within three years and to reduce pollution across Haifa Bay.[10] He also viewed the environmental protection portfolio partly as a means of helping address Israel’s housing crisis.[10] In explaining his priorities, he argued that disadvantaged communities often bore a disproportionate share of environmental harm.[10]

Gabbay emphasized the cumulative impact of industrial activity in Haifa Bay rather than treating each factory’s compliance with environmental standards as sufficient.[12] He argued that locating numerous factories within an urban population created a pollution problem because their emissions accumulated, even when individual plants met the applicable standards.[12] He announced a national plan with milestones for reducing air pollution from industry, energy production and transportation.[12]

At a conference addressing these issues, Gabbay cited a lowest estimate of 1,500 premature deaths annually from air pollution in Israel.[12] He said that reducing coal use had helped lower pollution in Hadera and Ashkelon and identified natural gas as one important means of cutting pollution.[12] His support for using natural gas to reduce emissions did not translate into support for the government’s revised framework agreement with gas exploration companies: he was the only minister to vote against that agreement.[13]

Gabbay resigned from the government in May 2016 following the decision to appoint Avigdor Liberman as defense minister and the dismissal of Moshe Ya’alon.[13] He said he could not accept those decisions and also criticized the government’s handling of security and its relations with the United States.[13] His resignation marked a break with Kahlon.[14]

Gabbay joined the Labor Party in December 2016 and entered its leadership contest, winning the July 2017 runoff against Amir Peretz.[9][3] Approximately 31,000 party members voted, with Gabbay receiving about 52 percent and Peretz about 47 percent.[3] In his victory speech, he presented the result as the beginning of a campaign to change Israel’s government.[3]

His new party was Israel’s historic social-democratic, left-of-center, pro-secular Zionist party.[2] Gabbay’s campaign sought to attract centrist and traditional voters who had moved into Netanyahu’s political orbit.[15] As leader, he maintained his support for separation from the Palestinians and a two-state solution with a demilitarized Palestinian state.[16]

Because Gabbay did not hold a Knesset seat, election as party chairman did not make him parliamentary opposition leader.[4] In his victory speech, he offered outgoing Labor chairman Yitzhak Herzog the role of opposition leader.[3]

Labor’s parliamentary partnership with Tzipi Livni’s Movement, or Hatnuah, had been established before the 2015 election, when Herzog led Labor and Livni, a former foreign minister, led the Movement.[17] The alliance was known as the Zionist Camp or Zionist Union.[17][18] When Herzog was elected chairman of the Jewish Agency and prepared to leave the Knesset in 2018, the alliance faced a further decision about the parliamentary opposition leadership; Livni and Shelly Yechimovich were identified as contenders.[17]

Gabbay’s leadership faced less favorable polling as well as its initial boost: in a December 2017 poll asking respondents whom they trusted as prime minister, 39 percent chose Netanyahu and 19 percent chose Gabbay.[19] His efforts to broaden Labor’s appeal also became entangled with internal party conflicts after the initial surge following his victory.[15]

Gabbay advocated separation from the Palestinians and a two-state solution consisting of Israel within defensible borders alongside a demilitarized Palestinian state.[16] He emphasized the need for trust-building by both sides rather than presenting an agreement solely as a question of territorial arrangements.[16] His 2019 platform called for separating major settlement blocs from other settlements and outposts, developing agreed settlement blocs and ending investment and funding for isolated settlements and outposts.[1]

His statements on Jerusalem placed particular weight on maintaining the city’s unity. He said that an undivided Jerusalem was more important than a political settlement with the Palestinians, while excluding Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem’s suburbs from that formulation.[1] On settlements, he suggested that a future agreement with the Palestinian Authority would not necessarily require evacuating settlements located within a future Palestinian state.[17]

Addressing the AJC Global Forum in Jerusalem in June 2018, Gabbay criticized support for remote settlements, arguing that they provided no security value to Israel.[5] He also called on the Palestinian Authority to end what he described as anti-Israel incitement and payments to terrorists.[5] His positions thus included both support for a negotiated separation and specific demands concerning Palestinian conduct.[5][16]

On Gaza, Gabbay supported an aggressive military response to attacks but argued that Israel also needed a longer-term policy to prevent another round of fighting.[5] He called for humanitarian relief directed to Gazans rather than Hamas and linked new policies toward Gaza to the return of Israeli hostages and the remains of Israeli soldiers held by Hamas.[5] In the same address, he attributed the violence under discussion to Hamas.[5]

Gabbay argued that Israel should prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear capability by relying on intelligence, military strength and quiet diplomacy.[16] He also called for an agreement with Sunni states.[16] In his June 2018 address, he affirmed the importance of the United States–Israel alliance and called for continued bipartisan American support for Israel.[5]

His discussion of future leadership extended beyond particular security arrangements to the state’s overall direction.[16] He said that Israel had lost a broader national vision and should aspire to be the best state for its citizens, with unity among the people as its most important value.[16] He also argued that a small group, which he described as “about 3% of the population,” had controlled Israel while valuing land more than people.[16]

At the June 2018 AJC Global Forum, Gabbay promised that, if elected prime minister, he would implement the previously signed compromise governing pluralistic prayer at the Western Wall.[5] The government had frozen the agreement in June 2017.[5] Declaring that the site belonged equally to all Jews, he said: “The Kotel (Western Wall) belongs to all of us equally, and I will implement the Kotel compromise as it was signed!”[5]

His positions around the 2019 election included support for Reform conversions, civil marriage and a compromise over access and prayer rules at the Western Wall.[1] He supported allowing transportation and commerce on Shabbat, while opposing the drafting of ultra-Orthodox Jews into the army.[1] These proposals accompanied his broader campaign commitments on economic security, housing and political conduct.[1]

Gabbay advocated greater economic security and more affordable housing for young families.[1] He also identified fighting corruption and political incitement among his priorities.[1] His concern with housing had already appeared during his tenure as environmental protection minister, when he described the ministry as having a potential role in addressing the housing crisis.[10]

In January 2019, Gabbay published the memoir Hakol Efshari, translated as “Everything is Possible.”[1] Its publication came during the period in which he was presenting his economic, social and diplomatic positions ahead of the 2019 election.[1]

On January 1, 2019, Gabbay announced the end of Labor’s partnership with Livni’s Hatnuah and the dissolution of the Zionist Union alliance while seated beside Livni on live television.[18] The announcement was unexpected and unilateral, and Livni had not been informed beforehand.[15][4] She left politics soon afterward.[15]

Gabbay said that Labor and Hatnuah had struggled to find common ground and that tensions between them would harm their election prospects.[4] The alliance’s breakup occurred amid internal disputes within Labor and shortly before the April 2019 election.[15][4] Labor won six seats in that election, its worst result to that point.[6]

In an initial account of his plans following the defeat, Gabbay said he would not contest the next leadership primary but would remain in Labor and take the reserved second place on its election list.[15] He accepted responsibility for mistakes, saying that they had arisen from conviction in the party’s path and a commitment to winning.[15]

In June 2019, he announced that he would not seek another term as chairman and was leaving politics.[6] He acknowledged his part in Labor’s condition and said that he had failed to change its culture of infighting.[6] Explaining why he would not continue simply as a legislator, he argued that he could not succeed as an ordinary Knesset member after having served as party chairman.[6]

Cellcom announced Gabbay’s appointment as chief executive in January 2020, with his term due to begin on January 19.[7] He was to replace Nir Sztern, returning to telecommunications management after his years in government and party politics.[7] Cellcom’s board announced his appointment after he was selected over two other candidates.[7]

In May 2022, Gabbay was appointed chief executive of Partner Communications, with the role scheduled to begin on June 1 after a six-month cooling-off period following his Cellcom tenure.[8] He was also part of the group that bought control of Partner from Hutchison for $300 million.[8] His personal investment in that transaction was reported as $90 million.[8]

Gabbay’s environmental record included advancing the plastic-bag levy, pursuing removal of the Haifa Bay ammonia tank and pressing for lower emissions from electricity generation.[11] His public explanation of pollution policy emphasized the combined effects of multiple industrial sources on nearby urban populations and the disproportionate burden of environmental harm on disadvantaged communities.[10][12]

His Labor leadership ended with the party’s six-seat result in April 2019 and his acknowledgment that he had not overcome its internal divisions.[6] That outcome contrasted with the initial surge following his 2017 victory, before he became enmeshed in internal party conflicts.[15] After leaving politics, his appointments at Cellcom and Partner returned him to the sector in which he had previously led Bezeq and Bezeq International.[7][8]

Gabbay’s opposition to the gas framework was a point of dispute: he argued that the decision had been made with inadequate information and insufficient economic understanding in the face of vested interests.[13] When resigning, he also criticized the government’s handling of security, relations with the United States and its conduct toward state institutions.[13]

Within Labor, Gabbay said that “undivided Jerusalem” was more important than a political settlement, excluding Arab neighborhoods in the city’s suburbs from that formulation.[1] He also suggested that a future agreement with the Palestinian Authority would not necessarily require evacuating settlements located within a future Palestinian state.[17] Gabbay denied having shifted right in a November 2017 speech at Ben-Gurion University, where he said that “the Left forgot what it is to be Jews.”[19] He also rejected joining a government with the Joint List, saying: “I do not see anything that connects us to them or allows us to be in the same government with them.”[19]

The unexpected termination of the Livni partnership became a further controversy during a period of internal party disputes.[4] Following the election defeat, Gabbay accepted responsibility for his contribution to Labor’s condition while identifying entrenched infighting as a problem he had not succeeded in changing.[6]