Millionaire businessman, who has little political experience, becomes party head after runoff with ex-leader Amir Peretz

A relative political unknown has swept to a shock victory to become head of Israel’s opposition Labour party and one of the main candidates to challenge the long serving rightwing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in future elections.

The emergence of Avi Gabbay, 50, a nonchalant businessman who burst onto Israel’s political scene, immediately drew comparisons to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, from some commentators, while others suggested it was the latest chapter in the once dominant party’s long decline.

Gabbay was elected leader on Monday night after two rounds of voting in which he defeated first the party’s incumbent head and official opposition leader, Isaac Herzog, and then former leader and favourite Amir Peretz, who had the backing of Israel’s main trade union body.

A self-made millionaire and former head of the Israeli telecoms company Bezeq, Gabbay is a Mizrahi – or eastern Jew – the child of Moroccan Jewish immigrants who grew up in a transit camp, overturning the long dominance in the Labour party of Ashkenazi Jews who resettled from Europe.

Gabbay will serve as the party’s head and candidate for prime minister but cannot be leader of the opposition as he is not a member of parliament.

His election comes amid dismal recent polling for the party that dominated Israel in its first decades of statehood, but has been largely eclipsed as the country’s electorate moved right under Netanyahu.

The high turnout surprised many, with commentators wondering whether Labour’s desire for a fresh face might be reflected more widely in an Israeli society that has become jaded by the scandals and moribund politics surrounding Netanyahu.

Gabbay has no high-level security experience, usually regarded as a prerequisite for high office in Israel. He has also flipped between membership of the centre-right Kulanu party and serving briefly – if almost invisibly – as an environment protection minister in Netanyahu’s coalition, before quitting and joining Labour.

However in his campaign, Gabbay managed to secure the support of former Labour leader and the party’s last prime minister Ehud Barak who hailed his victory as a “revolution” on his Facebook page, adding that Netanyahu would be “sweating tonight, with good reason”.

The question now is whether Gabbay can attract the support of working-class Mizrahi voters who Netanyahu and his Likud party have long counted on to stay in office.

Mizrahi Jews, many of whom arrived in Israel in 1950s, believe they were treated as second-class citizens by the Ashkenazi elite that dominated Labour, prompting them to vote Likud or other rightwing parties, even when Amir Peretz – also a Mizrahi – led Labour.

Although Gabbay and his often young supporters have presented his victory as a “revolution”, Gabbay’s policies appear less mould-breaking, favouring a resumption of talks with the Palestinians and halting construction outside the main Jewish settlement blocs.

Gabbay, however, is opposed to unilateral withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories, while his position on religions in schools and shabbat observance is equally middle of the road in an Israel that has become more right wing and observant.

Commenting on his win in Yedioth Ahornoth, veteran columnist Nahum Barnea said Israeli politics had “never known a victory such as this one” by an individual “unknown to most of the public just a few months ago.”

However, Ben Caspit, writing in Maariv, was more cautious: “Should Benjamin Netanyahu and Yair Lapid be concerned? It is too soon to tell. Bibi has no real cause for concern.

“If Gabbay thinks that he will sweep Likud voters with talk about social democracy,” he is wrong. “If he believes that daydreams about ‘peace’ will bring the voters home, the same is true. Someone has to let him know that the people of Israel have taken a sharp right turn.”</s>Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy.</s>Israel’s Labor Party on Monday elected political newcomer Avi Gabbay as its leader in hopes the former telecommunications executive will help unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Gabbay won 52% of the vote in a runoff election against Amir Peretz, a Labor Party veteran and a former party chairman, who received 47%. Gabbay will replace outgoing Labor chairman, Isaac Herzog, who placed third in the first round of primary voting on July 4.

In his victory speech, Gabbay promised “leadership that will act with courage and integrity toward peace with our neighbors’’ and to work toward replacing Netanyahu’s Likud Party as the country’s ruling party.

“This is the beginning of a path. That path leads to the changing of the government in Israel,” he said. “The Labor Party voted for change.”

Though Labor currently leads the opposition bloc in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, the party is struggling with an electorate that has shifted to the right in recent years, and a seeming lack of a charismatic political leader to reinvigorate the party base and attract new supporters.

While Labor’s forebears established the country after its founding and reached peace treaties with Israel’s neighbors, it’s been nearly two decades since the party won a general election. Herzog finished second in the 2015 elections, but his popularity collapsed after it was revealed that he secretly negotiated to join Netanyahu’s coalition.

Polls in recent months suggested that the party would lose about half the parliamentary seats it won in 2015.

Gabbay, 50, a relative unknown who headed Israel’s largest phone company, entered politics three years ago with a center-right party and briefly served as an environment minister under Netanyahu before resigning and joining the Labor Party last year.

The new Labor chairman has never been elected to the Israeli parliament and doesn’t carry the political baggage of more veteran lawmakers, some observers said. Because he is not a lawmaker, Gabbay won’t be able to serve as the opposition chairman in the parliament and will need to find an ally in the party to fill the position.

Gabbay, the son of Moroccan immigrants, has the potential to boost the party’s appeal among Israel’s Middle Eastern Jewish population, a voting bloc that traditionally has preferred Netanyahu’s Likud Party and shunned Labor as a party of secular European elites.

“The people don’t know him, but he has managed to sell himself as a new commodity and that’s the key thing,’’ said Ofer Zalzberg, an Israel analyst at the International Crisis Group.

But Gabbay lacks any experience in diplomatic or national security roles, leaving a stark contrast with Netanyahu, who has been known in Israel as “Mr. Security,” Zalzberg said. If a pair of corruption investigations of Netanyahu result in an indictment, however, Gabbay’s prospects might improve.

Though Israeli politics have become increasingly dominated by socioeconomic debates and complaints about the rising cost of living, political analysts say that when Israelis cast their ballots they most often vote for the candidate who is seen as a security hawk.

“In order to lead, you need to cross the security threshold in the eyes of the public,” said Jonathan Rynhold, a political science professor at Bar Ilan University. “Gabbay has no [security] record.”

At a Labor polling station in Tel Aviv, party members said that, even though Gabbay is a newcomer to the party, he represents a change for Labor compared with Peretz, who is viewed as part of Labor’s old-guard political machine.

Doron Braunshtein, a 41-year-old Labor member, bemoaned that neither of the candidates had the “star” power to rival Netanyahu, but said that Gabbay at least represents “someone new.”</s>(JTA) – Avi Gabbay will lead Israel’s Labor party after defeating his opponent in the second round of primaries.

On Monday evening, Gabbay, who switched to the centre-left Labor party several months ago from Kulanu, a smaller centre-right party, won the election to head the party, garnering 52 per cent of the vote. His opponent, Amir Peretz, a former Labor head and defense minister got 47 per cent of the vote.

Gabbay, a former environmental protection minister who was seen as a dark horse candidate in the Labor race, and Peretz advanced to the second round of voting after beating current opposition leader Isaac Herzog in the first party primaries last week. In the first round, Peretz got 33 per cent of the vote, Gabbay got 27 per cent and Herzog, who has served as the party’s chief for one four-year term, got 16 per cent.

Labor currently serves in the Knesset as part of the opposition bloc Zionist Union in partnership with the small Hatnua party of former foreign minister Tzipi Livni. Zionist Union holds 24 seats in the 120-member parliament.</s>Israel's main opposition Labor party voted in former businessman Avi Gabbay as its new leader Monday, said the party as it seeks to regain waning influence and win back supporters.

Gabbay, who only joined the party in December, took 52 percent of the votes in the runoff against longtime politician and former party leader Amir Peretz, Labor said in a statement.

Nearly 59 percent of Labor’s 52,505 members voted in the contest for leadership of the veteran party, which was seeking a new face to boost its standings in the polls.

The candidates advanced to the runoff by beating five others in last week's first round, with Peretz winning 32.7 percent and Gabbay 27.1 percent.

That vote saw current Labor chairman Isaac Herzog garner only 16.7 percent for a third-place finish, a rapid fall in popularity after leading the party in the last general elections in 2015.

Herzog has faced a barrage of criticism over his attempts to negotiate for his party to join Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition and over Labor’s slide in opinion polls.

In a statement following the vote, Herzog -- who had endorsed Peretz ahead of the runoff -- congratulated Gabbay on his "impressive victory" and said he would stand by him "to help strengthen Labor and change the government."

Israeli politics has seen a shift rightward in recent years, with Netanyahu and his Likud party in power since 2009.

Centrist parties such as Yesh Atid and Kulanu -- which Gabbay was a member of until recently -- have also benefited at the expense of Labor.

The country's last Labor prime minister was Ehud Barak from 1999 to 2001.

Ahead of the 2015 elections, Labor joined forces with Tzipi Livni's Hatnua to form the Zionist Union, which won 24 seats in the 120-seat parliament to become the largest opposition to Netanyahu's government.

Supporters of the two candidates in the runoff had hoped their backgrounds would help to widen Labor’s support.

Both are of Moroccan descent, rare for a leader of a major party in Israel, and they may be able to increase support for Labor among Mizrahi Jews of Middle Eastern or North African origin.

They also both support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But beyond that they have little in common.

Gabbay, 50, is seen as fresh face, having formerly headed Israeli telecommunications firm Bezeq before joining politics. He has never been a member of Israel's parliament.

In 2014, he joined forces with former Likud minister Moshe Kahlon to form center-right Kulanu.

Kulanu won 10 seats in the 2015 general elections and joined Netanyahu's coalition, with Gabbay appointed environment minister despite not being a parliament member.

He quit in 2016 in protest at the appointment of hardliner Avigdor Lieberman to head the defense ministry, saying the move was against Israel's security interests and would deepen societal divisions.

Gabbay announced in December that he was joining the Labor party. Barak, the ex-prime minister, has announced his support for Gabbay in the runoff.

After polls opened on Monday, he said on his Facebook page that he would bring "hope and change" while injecting new life into the party.

Peretz, 65 and with a trademark salt-and-pepper mustache, is a veteran politician, former trade union leader and ex-defense minister.

He was previously head of Labor from 2005-2007 and is the longest serving member of the Knesset, or parliament.

His first stint as leader ended after he was accused of failing in his post as defense minister during the 34-day war against Lebanon's Hizbullah in 2006.

Peretz later saw redemption, however, gaining praise for having pushed for the development of the Iron Dome missile defense system, now seen as an indispensable part of Israel's military infrastructure.

"We will work to heal the society and the divisions caused by Netanyahu," Peretz said on his Facebook page, pledging to act "immediately to relaunch the peace process."

"Amir Peretz'‎s advantage lies in his rich political experience," Nahum Barnea wrote in Israel's Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

"That is also a weakness: Over the course of his many years in politics, Peretz has won himself quite a few enemies. Avi Gabbay is Peretz'‎s mirror image: new, fresh and inexperienced."</s>Some have hailed Avi Gabbay, the telecom exec who was elected Monday to lead the centre-left Labor Party, as Israel’s version of French President Emmanuel Macron, the banker who recently swept to power with an outsider campaign.

“Like Macron, Gabbay brings hope,” said Abraham Diskin, a political science professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “People are again saying: Here is a new medicine. The old medicine didn’t cure us.”

But Israel already has two charismatic, outsider centrists in national politics. Both Yair Lapid and Moshe Kahlon in recent years led new moderate parties to electoral success, though not rule. So what does one more Macron mean for the country?

Gabbay (pronounced gab-BYE) successfully courted Labor’s left wing to win the primary. But he is widely viewed as a moderate.

He entered politics as a founding member of Kahlon’s centre-right Kulanu party, and joined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government in 2015. During the campaign, Gabbay was even forced to retract a televised denial that he had previously voted for the ruling Likud party.

Labor, like much of the historic Israeli left, is a shell of itself. According to Diskin, Gabbay would now be wise to embrace the centrist label. It is no accident, he said, that Kahlon and Lapid – who led his studiously middle-of-the-road Yesh Atid into the government in 2013 – found success far from either political pole. Israel has a long history of successful centrist parties, most notably Ariel Sharon’s Kadima, which won the 2006 election.

“Macron knew the centre is the best place to be, because most voters are there. That’s how you get political control,” said Diskin. “Or look at [Prime Minister David] Ben-Gurion. He tried to rule from the centre and leave leftist parties out of his government. One of Labor’s biggest problems is that it has forgotten this lesson.”

After leading Israel to independence in 1948 and then dominating Israeli politics for three decades, Labor has fallen on hard times. The party’s most recent national election win was 18 years ago, and opinion polls have showed it ranked just fourth or fifth in size among major parties.

Gabbay, 40, is expected to give a much needed popularity boost to his party, at least in the short term. But his wider effect on Israeli politics is less clear. A stronger Labor could actually solidify Netanyahu’s grip on power by siphoning votes from Yesh Atid, the only party polls have shown challenging Likud.

Alternatively, some hope Gabbay – whose parents immigrated from Morocco – will help Labor overcome its longstanding image as a bastion of well-to-do Israelis of Ashkenazi, or European Jewish, descent and attract some of the working-class Mizrahi, or Middle Eastern Jewish, voters who vote for Likud or Kulanu. In that way, he could expand the centre-left.

Gideon Rahat, a political scientist at Hebrew University and a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, said Gabbay appeared to have the tools to rebrand his party.

“Israeli politics is highly personalized. So Gabbay’s personality and his character are huge assets,” said Rahat. “Maybe more significantly, he’s Mizrahi. He may be able to take some Mizrahi votes not just from Lapid, but also from Kahlon and Netanyahu.”

Gabbay grew up in a Jerusalem transit camp, one of eight children, and, after serving in the Intelligence Corps, went on to make millions as the chief executive of Bezeq, Israel’s telecommunications monopoly. In 2015, he helped launch Kulanu and became the environmental protection minister. But a year later, he quit in protest after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu replaced defense minister Moshe Kahlon with the hawkish Avigdor Liberman as part of a political deal.

He joined Labor about six months ago.

Amid a crowded field, Gabbay made it to the party’s two-man runoff by coming in second to Amir Peretz, 65, a former Labor head and defense minister, who is also Mizrahi. Incumbent Labor chair Isaac Herzog got the third most votes and threw his support behind Peretz along with most of the Labor establishment.

Nevertheless, Gabbay prevailed by winning the hearts of the party’s rank and file. He appeared likable and nonchalant in his many TV appearances and made savvy use of social media. On Sunday, he shared Peretz’s Facebook post asking the public for helping finding his son’s lost dog. The comradely gesture earned critical last minute coverage and social media buzz.

After Gabbay’s victory, Labor leaders quickly threw their support behind him. Ehud Barak, the party’s most recent prime minister who has hinted at a political comeback, called it a revolution in Labor and said Netanyahu and his allies would be “sweating tonight, with good reason.”

For his part, Diskin predicted Gabbay would do little to redraw the political map. But with some political skill, he said, the newly elected Labor leader might be able to form a government with the two other centrist parties. Then, he said, Israel could have its Macron moment.</s>Israel's Labor Party has elected political newcomer Avi Gabbay as its new leader, with hopes to revive its fortunes after 16 years in the opposition.

Gabbay, 50, defeated Amir Peretz, a former party leader and defense minister, by a small margin in a runoff vote Monday.

Gabbay served a brief stint as environment minister under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but later resigned. A former telecom executive, Gabbay stresses his humble beginnings. He was the seventh of eight children born to immigrants from Morocco.

Labor, the party of David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin, dominated Israeli politics in the decades after independence, but has languished in the opposition since 2001.

The next national election is scheduled for late 2019. Labor currently polls as Israel's fourth or fifth-largest party.</s>JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel's Labor elected political newcomer Avi Gabbay as its leader Monday, hoping to inject new blood into the party that steered the Jewish state in the decades after independence but has been shut out of power for 16 years.

Labor led Israel for decades through wars, crises and the pursuit of peace, but has not governed since then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak was defeated in 2001 following a failed attempt to reach peace with the Palestinians.

Gabbay, 50, defeated Amir Peretz, a former party leader and defense minister, by a small margin in a runoff vote Monday.

Gabbay is relatively unknown in Israeli politics. He served a brief stint as environment minister under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition. He then resigned in protest last year and joined Labor when Netanyahu ousted Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon in favor of nationalist Avigdor Lieberman.

A former telecom executive, Gabbay stresses his humble beginnings as the seventh of eight children born to immigrants from Morocco.

Labor still has a long way to go before returning to its former glory as the party of David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin.

Labor's early leaders of European, or Ashkenazi, descent took a paternalistic attitude toward Jewish immigrants from Arabic-speaking countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Many of these immigrants, known as Mizrahi Jews, were sent to shantytown transit camps and largely sidelined.

They found their political savior in the Likud Party's Menachem Begin, who cultivated an outsiders' alliance that appealed to their sense of deprivation. With massive backing from Mizrahi Jews, he swept to power in 1977. In many ways, Labor has been fighting back ever since, rarely wresting control from Likud.

The past 16 years have been a downward spiral as the public has grown disillusioned with Labor's message of Middle East peace amid Palestinian violence and regional upheaval.

Though the next national election is scheduled for late 2019, polls show Labor currently winning just 10 to 15 seats in the 120-seat parliament - making it Israel's fourth or even fifth-largest party.</s>Israel's main opposition Labor party voted for a new leader Monday as it seeks to regain waning influence and win back supporters who have drifted toward centrist and right-wing candidates.

The runoff election sees two candidates with sharply different political backgrounds: Amir Peretz, a longtime politician and former party leader; and Avi Gabbay, an ex-businessman who joined Labor only months ago.

Some 52,000 party members are eligible to vote in the runoff, with polls open from 11:00 am to 9:00 pm (0800 to 1800 GMT). The election is expected to be close.

By around 6:00 pm, voter turnout had reached some 36 percent, according to a party official. Results were expected to be announced around 9:30 pm.

The candidates advanced to the runoff by beating five others in last week's first round, with Peretz winning 32.7 percent and Gabbay 27.1 percent.

The vote saw current Labor chairman Isaac Herzog garner only 16.7 percent for a third-place finish, a rapid fall in popularity after leading the party in the last general elections in 2015.

Herzog has faced a barrage of criticism over his attempts to negotiate for his party to join Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition and over Labor's slide in opinion polls.

Israeli politics has seen a shift rightward in recent years, with Netanyahu and his Likud party in power since 2009.

Centrist parties such as Yesh Atid and Kulanu -- which Gabbay was a member of until recently -- have also benefited at the expense of Labor.

The country's last Labor prime minister was Ehud Barak from 1999 to 2001.

Ahead of the 2015 elections, Labor joined forces with Tzipi Livni's Hatnua to form the Zionist Union, which won 24 seats in the 120-seat parliament to become the largest opposition to Netanyahu's government.

Supporters of the two candidates in the runoff hope their backgrounds will widen Labour's support.

Both are of Moroccan descent, rare for a leader of a major party in Israel, and may be able to increase support for Labor among Mizrahi Jews -- those of Middle Eastern or North African origin.

They also both support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But beyond that, Peretz and Gabbay have little in common.

Peretz, 65 and with a trademark salt-and-pepper mustache, is a veteran politician, former trade union leader and ex-defense minister.

He was previously head of Labor from 2005-2007 and is the longest serving member of the Knesset, or parliament.

His first stint as leader ended after he was accused of failing in his post as defense minister during the 34-day war against Lebanon's Hizbullah in 2006.

Peretz however later saw redemption, gaining praise for having pushed for the development of the Iron Dome missile defense system, now seen as an indispensable part of Israel's military infrastructure.

He has received backing from Herzog and other party insiders in the runoff.

"We will work to heal the society and the divisions caused by Netanyahu," Peretz said on his Facebook page, while also pledging to act "immediately to relaunch the peace process."

Gabbay, 50, is seen as a fresh face, having formerly headed Israeli telecommunications firm Bezeq before joining politics. He has never been a member of Israel's parliament.

In 2014, he joined forces with former Likud minister Moshe Kahlon to form centre-right Kulanu.

Kulanu won 10 seats in the 2015 general elections and joined Netanyahu's coalition, with Gabbay appointed environment minister despite not being a parliament member.

He quit in 2016 in protest at the appointment of hardliner Avigdor Lieberman to head the defense ministry, saying the move was against Israel's security interests and would deepen societal divisions.

Gabbay announced only in December that he was joining the Labor party. Barak, the ex-prime minister, has announced his support for Gabbay in the runoff.

After polls opened on Monday, he said on his Facebook page that he would bring "hope and change" while injecting new life into the party.

The party's voters will be faced with a stark choice.

"Amir Peretz'‎s advantage lies in his rich political experience," Nahum Barnea wrote in Israel's Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

"That is also a weakness: Over the course of his many years in politics, Peretz has won himself quite a few enemies. Avi Gabbay is Peretz'‎s mirror image: new, fresh and inexperienced."</s>Tal Schneider, an independent Israeli political blogger, described the result as a “dramatic change” for the Labor Party. “About 62,000 people went to the polls today,” she said. “They chose someone totally new and somewhat unfamiliar to the public and the voters.”

Ehud Barak, a former Labor leader, prime minister and military chief of staff who strongly endorsed Mr. Gabbay and seems poised for a political comeback of his own, described Mr. Gabbay’s win as a “revolution in Labor.” Mr. Barak added that Mr. Netanyahu and his allies would be “sweating tonight, with good reason.”

Isaac Herzog, the departing Labor chairman who won the party 24 seats in the last election to the Likud’s 30, was knocked out last week in a first round of voting. Some in the party have described the shake-up as “electrifying.”

Mr. Gabbay’s path to the Labor leadership has been unorthodox. Growing up in a Jerusalem transit camp, he was identified at a young age as a gifted student and was sent to school in an affluent neighborhood of the city. His father was a technician.

He studied economics and business administration at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, served in the budget division of the Ministry of Finance and then went into business and rose to become the chief executive of Bezeq, Israel’s telecommunications monopoly, a post he held until 2013. He has been unapologetic about his earnings there of millions of dollars.

He then helped Moshe Kahlon, a former Likud minister, build Kulanu, a new center-right party that joined Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition after the 2015 elections. Mr. Gabbay became the minister for environmental protection, but he quit after a year, saying that he did not like what he saw in government and that Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to replace his defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, with the ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman as part of a political deal was too much to swallow.

Addressing a hall filled with cheering supporters at 11 p.m. shortly after the results were in, Mr. Gabby said, “To all those who rushed to eulogize the Labor Party as an alternative for the government, and to all those who thought the Israeli citizens had lost hope in change, to all those — tonight is the answer.”

“Tomorrow we will begin the journey to the hearts of good Israelis,” he added. “Israelis who believe in our ideology and values, but Israelis who, for decades, have not voted Labor.”

Mr. Gabbay and Mr. Peretz, 65, from the immigrant town of Sderot near the border with the Gaza Strip, are both Mizrahi, or Eastern, Jews of Moroccan descent, and their leadership contest brought to the fore the debate over Israel’s identity and ethnic politics. Labor has always been identified with the old Ashkenazic elite who hailed from Europe.

This is not the first time a Mizrahi, or Sephardic, Jew has headed the Labor Party. Mr. Peretz led it for a period in the past, as did Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, an Iraqi-born politician. Both Mr. Peretz and Mr. Ben-Eliezer were also defense ministers.

Mizrahi Jews, who immigrated mostly in the 1950s, were resentful of the sometimes highhanded treatment by the Labor establishment, so many have traditionally voted for Likud or other right-wing or religious parties. Though Mizrahim make up roughly half of Israel’s Jewish population, and about a third of Israeli children are now born into mixed Mizrahi/Ashkenazic families, economic and educational gaps remain.

Despite hopes in Labor that Mr. Gabbay will be able to bring in new voters from sectors of the public that have long shunned the party, Mitchell Barak, an Israeli pollster and political commentator, said his surveys over the years showed that the Mizrahim consistently preferred Ashkenazic candidates for prime minister.

“There has not yet been a Sephardi prime minister,” Mr. Barak said, “and I don’t see one on the horizon.”

The next elections are scheduled for late 2019, though many Israeli governments do not last their full four-year terms.

Ron Cahlili, a Mizrahi documentary director and left-wing activist, said in a radio interview this week: “The role of a Mizrahi leader is not to be Mizrahi and to say I’m Mizrahi and I live in Sderot. The role of a Mizrahi leader is to reduce gaps between Mizrahim and Ashkenazim. Period.”
Avi Gabbay, former minister of environmental protection in Benyamin Netanyahu's government, wins an upset victory in the primaries of the Israeli Labor Party, thus becoming leader of the opposition.