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| By Associated Press November 19, 2005 |
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In just one week as Labor Party leader, Amir Peretz has upended Israeli politics, crushing dissent in his fractious party and forcing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to agree to early elections.
The rise of Peretz, a Moroccan-born Jew with only a high school education, also represented an ethnic upheaval for Labor, which has long been dominated by Jews of European descent.
Initially dismissed as a populist firebrand, Peretz stunned critics by rebranding Labor as the voice of the downtrodden and shifting Israel's political debate from the conflict with the Palestinians onto taxes, worker rights and the wide gap between the haves and the have-nots.
Peretz, the country's top union leader, re-energized a Labor Party that had grown increasingly weak and was in danger of disintegrating into irrelevance, Nahum Barnea, a columnist for the daily Yediot Ahronot, said Friday.
"With Amir maybe they will be buried also, but it will be a much more interesting and lively burial," he said.
After seizing control of Labor on Nov. 9 in a surprise primary victory over 82-year-old veteran politician Shimon Peres, Peretz, 53, immediately began forcing his will on everyone from recalcitrant party leaders to the prime minister.
Labor's Cabinet ministers whispered of a revolt when he demanded the party pull out of the coalition government and force early elections. Refusing to back down, he burst into their offices and forced them to sign undated letters of resignation, according to Israeli media reports.
Sharon also dismissed his calls for an early election, but by the time the two men met Thursday, the prime minister's coalition was crumbling and he agreed to call a vote by the end of March, eight months ahead of schedule.
"(Peretz) is out to win and in a big way. So it was important for him to prove from the very first week that he's the boss," political analyst Yoel Marcus wrote in the Haaretz daily.
Labor leaders hope Peretz will appeal to disenfranchised Jews of Middle Eastern descent, who bitterly abandoned the party decades ago. But Peretz could also repel immigrants from Russia _ never traditional Labor voters _ who view him as a Bolshevik, look down on his Moroccan roots and fear he will be too accommodating to the Palestinians, Barnea said.
Before Peretz, political analysts were preparing obituaries for Labor, the party that led Israel for its first three decades. They contended that Labor lacked a clear message and did not present itself as a viable alternative to Sharon's hardline Likud.
Labor remained in Sharon's coalition though it opposed the government's free market policies, and Sharon's decision to pull out of the Gaza Strip unilaterally stripped Labor of part of its peace platform.
Peretz quickly reframed the political debate, taking advantage of a lull in violence after five years of Israel-Palestinian fighting to focus on social issues and accuse Sharon's government of increasing poverty and social inequality.
He has advocated repairing Israel's frayed social safety net, with the centerpiece of his campaign a call to raise the monthly minimum wage to $1,000 -- a demand that has the support of more than 80 percent of the public, according to two polls published Friday.
His efforts appear to have worked, at least for now.
A poll published Friday in Yediot Ahronot showed that in the coming election Labor would receive 28 seats in the 120-member Knesset, not enough to make Peretz prime minister but six seats more than the party now controls. The poll of 501 people had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.
Labor's previous candidate for prime minister, Amram Mitzna, warns that Israeli voters might be focused on social issues now, but if there is a new wave of Palestinian bombings, security will instantly rise to the top of the agenda.
"If it will be quiet for the next two or three months OK ... but more than one election was influenced by terror attacks," he said Friday.
Peretz's success could also depend on whether Sharon chooses to remain in the badly fractured Likud, where hardline lawmakers rebelled against his Gaza pullout, or to form a new centrist party, possibly with Peres -- a decision expected in the coming days.
Peretz has also been working to polish his image and deflect accusations he is a radical socialist throwback who would destroy the economy. He trimmed back his trademark mustache, which was once so bushy it obscured his mouth, and courted Israeli business leaders.
In an effort to soften his image, he recounted his poor immigrant childhood in an interview to Israel's Channel 2 TV that was broadcast Friday. He told of being the second in command of the neighborhood children's gang run by his older brother and of living in a cramped home with his parents, grandparents and four siblings.
He described himself as a capitalist from his youth, when he grew and sold flowers.
"My father knew that to achieve things you have to work hard," he said.
He probably did not help his image, however, when asked about his favorite recent movie.
His answer: "The Motorcycle Diaries," which depicted a youthful journey by leftist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara.
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