At the end of March Israel will experience one of the most exciting and fateful elections it has ever known. In these elections Amir Peretz is likely to lead the Labor Party back to power. If this happens, it would be the fastest and most impressive rise to the top in the history of Israeli politics.
This man's political power stems from the successful combination of personal qualities and our political culture. A politician having
successful leadership qualities but a poor grasp of the things going on around him will never make it to the top – this is the heart-rending story of Shimon Peres.
A politician well-attuned to his surroundings but lacking personal leadership qualities will forever remain little more than a party activist, such as Uzi Cohen. But Peretz is an activist who made it to the top: He is a combination of inner qualities and feedback from the world around him.
Thus, he has managed since becoming Labor chairman to reset the country's political agenda, to change the political landscape and bring Israeli politics back to its normal state (he even managed to force Sharon to hurriedly create his new party and move to disband the Knesset). At this rate, Peretz' road to the prime minister’s chair is sealed.
The fact that so many politicians and public figures have taken out their anger on Peretz since his election as Labor chairman screams out for interpretation. It has created for Peretz one of the main parameters for political power: prominence that is impossible to ignore.
The reasons behind the wave of reactions emanating from every end of the political spectrum, and also from within his own party, range from fear and suspicion, to jealousy and simple lack of support, yet everybody understands that Israeli politics is undergoing a seismographic-tectonic shakeup, the end-point of which is still hard to predict.
Peretz' rise threatening
Peretz' rush to center stage will present a challenge for all of Israel's public officials. Each one who enjoyed the benefits of and taken shelter under the wings of corruption, existing arrangements and apathy are now uniting against the new winds blowing.
Of course, their arguments and reasons are varied: Fight poverty? Great.
He's a pretender; we've got the right plan.
Peace process? Excellent. He's an extremist, but we're realistic. Leaving the government? Okay, just go a bit slower.
Here, too, Peretz shows his strength: he is influencing and creating a new political agenda. Essentially, attempts to delegitimize his positions will come up for discussion and define the debate.
The Peretz effect is accelerated and driven to the edge by each party. The Likud is tryiing to mend splits and come together to avert being rejected by many traditional supporters in favor of the new leader of the rival party. And in Labor, there is a tumult between the old guard and a new generation hoping to replace them.
On the radical right, too, there have been clumsy moves towards instrumental cooperation to a meaningful bloc, and the left-wing Meretz Party is making noises about joining the rejuvenated Labor Party.
Thus, Amir Peretz has exemplified an additional element of potential
influence: He has brought about changes, and accelerated the process of destroying old alliances and building new ones across the political map.
Just like Europe
But Peretz real potential for power lies in restoring normality to Israeli politics for the first time since the state was founded.
From the beginning, Israeli politics has been an anomaly, at least compared to the European model. It reflected opposite paradigms, according to which the right represents hope for change and railies against the government and the status quo, whereas the left represents conformism and conservatism of the ruler's agenda.
This political paradigm was opposite to normative political developments in democratic nation-states from the beginning of the 19th century onward.
According to European historiography, right-wing, patriotic groups led their countries to national liberation and founded their independent countries. Germany's Bismarck and Garibaldi in Italy are the classic examples of this process.
On the other side, the worker-socialist left, with its leaning towards universalism, turned into the natural and immediate opposition. With the creation of the state and social-economic preparations for it, the under classes and periphery began to revolt against being pushed to the fringes, and came to see the left as their refuge from the ruling right.
In Israel, historical circumstances dictated a different picture: The workers’ left created the country while the Revisionist right was pushed to the sidelines. The ruling left consolidated all the satiated and satisfied, while right-wing opposition drew the embittered, people who suffered from the dominance of the Mapai Party.
The effect of this was that the ruling bourgeois party became known as the Labor Party, its leaders wore blue shirts and activists waved the flag of toil and work, while the right continued to attract the lower classes. Right wing leaders wore starched shirts and ties and preached nationalism.
Thus, a bizarre situation was created, where the left represented the rich and privileged, and the right represented the poor and lower classes striving for change. This division perpetuated the socio-economic split, the ethnic division between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, the geographic split between the center of the country and the periphery, and the split between religious and secular.
Amir Peretz is the first Labor Party leader to represent the underside of each of these splits; that is to say workers, Sephardim, the periphery, and traditionalists. In doing so, he has turned Israeli politics 180 degrees, towards stability and authenticity.
This will put an end to the perpetual madness and chronic lack of voter satisfaction and to people feeling that their political parties do not represent them, and put an end to the worrying phenomena of "floating votes," or even worse, apathy or non-participation.
When political parties begin to authentically and legitimately represent their real intended constituencies, Israeli society will show its responsibility, its faith and good will to contribute to the joint project of Israeli democracy. This is the true power of the new leader of the Labor Party.
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