Labor Party leader Amram Mitzna said today that the new Likud list shows the party's true face: "Right-wing, with no fresh message or ability to extricate us from the morass... Ariel Sharon will have trouble implementing the moderate line that he is trying to present." Mitzna is in favor of a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza if renewed negotiations with the Palestinians do not succeed. He said today that if Hizbullah attacks Israel, "our reaction must be a mortal military blow against everything that moves there, for that is our true red line beyond which we can no longer recede."



The 110,000 members of the Labor Party are electing their Knesset candidates today, in 350 polling stations across the country. The first three spots on the list are reserved for Mitzna, former party leader Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, and Shimon Peres. The seventh spot is guaranteed to the party's secretary-general MK Ophir Pines, and Rabbi Michael Melchior has also been guaranteed a slot in the framework of the party's agreement with the Meimad movement [see below]. Leading candidates are Ephraim Sneh, Shlomo Ben-Ami, Avraham Burg, Dalia Itzik, Chaim Ramon, Avraham Shochat, Effie Oshaya, and others. Extreme left-wing candidates such as Yossi Beilin, Yuli Tamir, Tzali Reshef, and Yossi Katz, who support party leader Amram Mitzna, fear a concerted effort by Ben-Eliezer supporters to push them down to unrealistic spots on the list.



The polls close at 9 PM, and results should be in by midnight.