Can plan to annex settlement blocs revive Israel's Labor Party?

Senior Labor Party member Eitan Cabel recently published a new plan that he qualified as a “sobering-up initiative.” According to his proposal, which he presented in a May 24 Haaretz editorial, Israel should not wait for the Palestinians to negotiate a two-state solution, but should instead proceed with unilateral steps. Cabel’s plan has caused a commotion within Labor, but he is not surrendering to the right as many of his fellow party members claim. He is an important voice on the center-left who wants to introduce a pragmatic and relevant new agenda.

As one of the longest-serving Knesset members, Cabel has long been a steady and enthusiastic advocate of separation from the Palestinians in the form of a two-state solution. Now, in his Haaretz piece, he calls on Labor members to wake up. The plan that he laid out is not an attempt by Cabel to turn his back on his own vision. Rather, he simply proposes postponing it, because it is impossible to achieve for the time being.

That is why the attacks on Cabel seem to make no sense. Within Labor, he has been subjected to aggressive responses and even calls to suspend him. His fellow party members should instead be celebrating that there is one among them trying to initiate an internal ideological discussion so that a party that has failed time and again at the ballot box can regain its relevance and win back public trust. Instead, that one person is being denounced and condemned.

“We don’t need to open our eyes,” Labor Party member Itzik Shmuli wrote in a Haaretz editorial of his own. “We need to be convinced that we are on the right path.” Meanwhile, party chairman Avi Gabbay clarified that Cabel’s proposal is his own and not representative of the party.