Analysis: Amram Mitzna: Can he settle in as leader?

The election of the former tank commander and Haifa mayor Amram Mitzna, to the leadership of Israel's Labor Party is an important development, but not necessarily decisive.

Many observers and specialists in Israeli affairs agree that Mitzna's tenure would be, not only the most difficult period of adjustment a Labor leader has ever faced up to, but it could prove to be the shortest in the party's history.

Mitzna, a former central command officer in the occupied territories and supporter of "breaking bones" policy during the first Intifada, turned "dovish", will be presiding over a party which has been tearing itself apart since the death of his last charismatic leader Yitzhak Rabin. Amram Mitzna has emerged from relative obscurity and is faced with almost impossible task: settle as a leader, neutralise hostile part convention, unite senior party members, gain the trust of his many rivals, set up a campaign for general election, and all this in only two months and a week.

Many analysts believe Mitzna's leadership will be a sort of stop-gap while the real centres of power within the Labor Party are being engaged in a process of reconfiguration to eventually produce the desire leader.

As the likely loser in the general election as polls are suggesting, Mitzna will face another challenge for the party's leadership by next summer, when it is believed that either the former Histadrut leader Haim Ramon, or the former minister Yossi Beilin, might become the new Labor's leader. To them, according to the Israeli analyst of Ha'aretz, Yossi Verter, "Mitzna was nothing more than an effective broom (to get rid of the former leader and former defence minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer) and there is always another broom around some corner."

"Until he decided to run," Verter says, "Mitzna had never attended meetings of the party's Central Committee, its bureau or its convention."

But in the meantime, the advent of Mitzna under the gloomy political climate in Israel and the brutal Likud's led occupation of the Palestinian territories, is for many "a bit of fresh air," according to European government sources.

"Mitzna's ideas," the sources told Gulf News, "are probably the closest to ours when it comes to the peace process, the question of settlements and negotiation with Arabs in order to put an end to the conflict in the Middle East and withdrawal from occupied territories." Mitzna's views and political programme may provide "the alternative" to the current government of Ariel Sharon, or indeed to a government led by Sharon's rival Benjamin Netanyahu, "but unfortunately his party is unable to provide the necessary majority to implement them."

The director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, Chris Doyle, agrees. He tells Gulf News: "Opinion polls show that Israeli voters would like to see Mitzna's agenda work but are not prepared to give up the safety net of the tough security approach of Sharon or Netanyahu."

Doyle points also to an external factor which will not come in Mitzna's favour. "He also has the headache of knowing that strangely the U.S. administration has a more hawkish position than his, which means that the Likud is not under pressure externally."

But yet, given the state of the Labor Party, "a success for Mitzna in these elections may be just to ensure Labor remains the largest party in Israeli politics whilst running the Likud candidate reasonably close," he adds. "The Labor Party is at the stage of fighting for its own historic existence, it has lost its premier status in Israeli politics and is fast losing its natural constituency," Doyle says. "Israelis vote along either ethnic or religious lines, hence Labor and Likud have seen their Knesset representation slip."