BICOM

Israel’s Labour Party will today go to the polls to elect its list of parliamentary candidates ahead of the 17 March general election.

48,904 members will vote at 400 polling stations in 76 locations across the country, with the results scheduled to be announced tomorrow. Party leader Isaac Herzog will be the first name on the list, followed by Hatnuah leader Tzipi Livni with the two parties having agreed to run on a joint electoral ticket.

As a result, Labour candidates will be competing for the third slot and subsequent positions in today’s vote. Former party leader Shelly Yachimovich has been widely tipped to secure third spot. Yesterday she announced that she had raised the maximum campaign contributions legally permitted, the vast majority from small donations. However, current MKs Merav Michaeli, Erel Margalit and Eitan Cabel are also tipped to perform well and challenge Yachimovich. Current polling indicates that the Labour-Hatnuah list could win between 20-25 Knesset seats.

Two veteran MKs will not be running in today’s primary. Avishay Braverman and former Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer both recently announced their retirement from politics. Among the new faces competing for an electable slot include Rabbi Gilad Kariv, director of the Reform Movement in Israel and Ayelet Nechmias-Varbin, who served as an advisor to former-Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin and is a director of several companies. The eleventh slot on the Labour list is being reserved for an as yet unnamed security figure. Kadima leader, former Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz and former head of Military Intelligence Amos Yadlin are thought to be the two potential candidates.

In other election news, Aryeh Deri announced yesterday that he would return to head Shas, only two weeks after having resigned in the wake of a leaked video clip which showed him being criticized by the party’s revered spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. An apparently distraught Deri had declared he was leaving politics, but he said yesterday that the party and its voters “are more important than any other consideration.”