With at least half a dozen members of the defunct Hatnua Party joining the Labor Party – and guaranteed slots among the first 21 “realistic” candidate seats on the Labor list – Labor MKs were up in arms Sunday, hours before a Labor Party meeting in which they will be asked to approve the back-room deal cooked up last week by Tzipi Livni, the leader of Hatnua, and Labor leader Yitzchak Herzog.
With seats in short supply, MKs who are serving in the current Knesset are said to be very fearful that they will not “make the cut” in the new Labor list.
Details on the deal were revealed on Sunday, just hours before a meeting in which the Labor party members were to be asked to approve the fait accompli.
But Labor MKs got even more bad news Sunday afternoon. In another deal that Herzog failed to inform Labor MKs of, reports said that he had promised to reserve two more of the short-supply Labor list seats. Neither Yuval Rabin, son of the former murdered Prime Minister, nor Manuel Trachtenberg, the former judge who several years ago issued a report on lowering the cost of living in Israel, will have to contend for their seats.
The reports said that it was possible that Herzog had promised even more “VIPs” Labor list seats, adding to the growing dissatisfaction in the party.
Details on the seats Rabin and Trachtenberg would receive were not revealed, but sources said they were “realistic” seats. In the Livni-Herzog deal, five seats through the top 25 on the Labor list will be reserved for candidates of Livni’s choice: the 8th, 16th, 21st, 24th, and 25th seats on the list. According to polls, the bottom two or three are very questionable, as it appears unlikely, at least at this point, that the joint Herzog-Livni list will get more many than 20 or 21 seats in the next Knesset.
Livni herself will receive the number two slot, while the eleventh seat is reserved for former Kadima head Shaul Mofaz. And of course, Herzog himself will take the number one slot.
The bottom line, said disgruntled Labor MKs, was that there were a grand total of seven Knesset seats in realistic positions for them to contend over. Herzog, according to sources, is prepared for some dissent and loud shouting by members, who themselves will have less opportunity to serve in the next Knesset.
The dissent, which has not been reported in the media, is at odds with the public display of “unity” Labor has been putting on in support of the union. Speaking Sunday, Labor MK Eitan Cabel said that he was “proud of the members of the party who have provided great support for this decision. This is the basis for the revolution of 2015.”
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