Political doves win top slots as Labor Party holds primary

JERUSALEM, Feb. 16 (JTA) — Political doves have emerged as the winners after Labor Party members voted to determine the party’s list of candidates in the May elections for the Knesset. The top five finishers in Monday’s primary were Knesset members Shlomo Ben-Ami and Yossi Beilin, former Israel Defense Force deputy chief and political newcomer Matan Vilnai, Jewish Agency for Israel chairman and former legislator Avraham Burg, and Knesset member Uzi Baram. Ben-Ami will take the third spot in Labor’s roster of candidates, behind party leader Ehud Barak and former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, whose slot behind Barak was uncontested. In addition to Peres, slots have also been reserved for Labor candidates representing women and recent immigrants. Barak has also sought to reserve a number of top slots for members of other political parties who may form a coalition with Labor before the elections are held. One of those whom Barak is hoping to woo with a top slot is David Levy, who resigned last year as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s foreign minister. About 60 percent of the eligible 163,000 Labor Party members voted in Monday’s primary. After the votes were tabulated Tuesday, Barak said he was “proud of the new list.” Beilin, Baram and Ben-Ami have all been outspokenly dovish regarding the peace process with the Palestinians. Beilin was an architect of the Oslo accords. Ben-Ami last year backed a motion in the Knesset — which was later defeated — for the establishment of a Palestinian state with eastern Jerusalem as its capital. Barak is said to be hoping that Ben-Ami, a Moroccan-born history professor who finished 34th in the 1996 Labor primary, would draw Sephardi voters to the party. Labor has long been an Ashkenazi stronghold. Derogatory remarks about Sephardim that Labor Knesset member Ori Orr made last year were an embarrassment for the party. As a result of those comments, Orr was temporary suspended from his parliamentary duties. It appeared that Orr will be bumped from the Knesset in the upcoming elections, after he failed to place high enough in Monday’s primary. Netanyahu said Tuesday that the outcome of the Labor primary proved its true “leftist” identity. But Labor Knesset member Avraham Shochat rejected that characterization, saying that Netanyahu, who has also upheld the Oslo accords, certainly would not define himself as a leftist.