my own," Ben-Eliezer says proudly. "I am a totally self-made man." Drafted into the army in 1954, Ben-Eliezer rose though the ranks to become commander of an elite commando unit, military governor and coordinator of government activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and commander in southern Lebanon. Because of Ben-Eliezer's experience with the Palestinians and his fluency in Arabic, Rabin sent responsible for the West Bank. His decision two years later to take a temporary leave from the army to study him on a secret mission to Tunis in 1993 to test whether Arafat was ready for reconciliation with at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government was Israel. Ben-Eliezer came back saying that he was. seen by then-Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin as tan- Ben-Eliezer started his political career in the early tamount to defection in the midst of battle. 1980s in the ethnic Sephardi Tami Party, soon mov- Within a year of leaving the army in 1993, Mitzna ing to his friend Ezer Weizman's centrist Yahad, and was elected mayor of Haifa, Israel's third largest city. only joining Labor with Weizrnan in the mid-1980s. He presents his tenure in Haifa as a model for the By 1992, Ben-Eliezer was in charge of Labor's country as a whole: Under his leadership, the city has membership drive, which he used to build a formi- absorbed 70,000 new immigrants, its dable power base. Last year, he defeated Knesset 350,000 Jewish and 70,000 Arab residents Speaker Avraham Burg for the party leadership. live in relative harmony and, despite the His opponents charge that as defense minister in national economic slowdown, its develop- Sharon's unity government, Ben-Eliezer merely carried ment has been unprecedented. out the prime minister's policies and never tried Much of Mitzna's attraction for Labor voters to present an alternative Labor Party peace plan. stems from his quiet personality and his pro- "Sharon was the chef, and Ben-Fliezer merely fessed dedication to a new, cleaner style of pol- the cook's helper," Ramon says. itics. Yet on the key political and socioeco- Ramon, 52, by far the most forceful ora- nomic issues facing Israel, all three candidates tor of the three, was born into a poor have similar positions: A readiness to talk with Eastern European family in Jaffa and the Palestinians and, if that proves impossible, entered politics in the Labor Party's youth to withdraw unilaterally from most of the wing before qualifying as a lawyer. Amram West Bank to more defensible lines; on the Mitzna economy, less spending on Jewish settlements Young Leaders in the West Bank and more on retirees, stu- A Knesset member at age 33, Ramon was dents and poor development towns. soon identified as one the party's young stars. There are nuanced differences in their A group of eight young Knesset members, approaches to the Palestinians, however. including Burg and Yossi Beilin, coalesced Mitzna would be willing to negotiate with around the charismatic Ramon, who was any Palestinian leader, including Palestinian marked as the heir apparent to Labor's leader- Authority leader Yasser Arafat; Ben-Eliezer ship after the Rabin-Peres era. was one of the first Labor politicians to say Haim Ramon But Ramon made a series of bold political that Arafat had exhausted his role as moves that cost him dearly in the party. He Palestinian leader and should be bypassed; – formed a list of his own to win control of the and Ramon doesn't believe any Palestinian Histadrut Trade Union from Labor, and pro- leader, even a new one, would be willing ceeded to sell off the bloated federation's right now to make peace with Israel. – assets. Labor stalwarts accused Ramon of Mitzna's most obvious weak point is his destroying one of the party's most important inexperience in national politics, which power bases. As health minister, Ramon also both Ben-Eliezer and Ramon have been drafted an unpopular health bill and, in remorselessly targeting. Ben-Eliezer snaps 1996, ineptly ran Shimon Peres' losing prime that inexperience was former Prime Benjami n ministerial campaign against Binyamin Minister Ehud Barak's undoing, and that Ben-Elie. zer Netanyahu. His ensuing unpopularity caused Mitzna doesn't have anything like Barak's Ramon to pass up a run for the Labor leader- brain, only his political inexperience. ship against Ehud Barak in 1997, and in the 2001 Ramon calls the idea of Mitzna as national savior an race between Burg and Ben-Eliezer, Ramon was criti- illusion. cized for failing to support his friend Burg. Ramon was persuaded to run this time to stop Ben- Jew From Iraq Eliezer. Now, by staying in the race and not transfer- Ben-Eliezer, 66, a blunt, Falstaffian character, was ring his allegiance to Mitzna — as most of his sup- born into a family of well-to-do merchants in the porters have advised him to do — Ramon could, iron- southern Iraqi city of Basra. At age 13, he was spirit- ically, save Ben- Eliezer's skin. ed to Israel through Iran and taken to the left-wing As the incumbent, Ben-Eliezer controls the party Hashomer Hatzair's Kibbutz Merhavia. machine, which is worth a few percentage points in Three years later, when Ben-Eliezer's family bringing out the vote on election day. With Ramon arrived penniless, he moved with them to a transit still in the race and taking votes from Mitzna, that camp near Netanya. Young Ben-Eliezer and his might just be enough to prevent the Haifa mayor from father worked as laborers in nearby factories. winning. "Everything I have achieved, I have achieved on Party Dogfight With Ramon staying in race, Labor leadership primary is up for grabs. LESLIE SUSSER Jewish Telegraphic Agency Jerusalem A little over a week before the Labor Party's Nov. 19 primary elections, Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzna was well ahead in the three-way race for party leadership. Unfortunately for Mitzna, if a week is a long time in politics, in Israeli politics it's an eon. Indeed, the Mitzna camp was eagerly awaiting a Nov. 11, press conference where legislator Haim Ramon was expect- ed to announce that he was withdrawing from the race. That would have all but sealed Mitzna's victory over incumbent Benjamin Ben-Eliezer. Yet Ramon surprised everyone by announcing he would f ig b ht on until the bitter end. Pulling out now, pundits explained, would probably have spelled the end of Ramon's political career. Ramon's perseverance means that both Mitzna and Ben-Eliezer may fail to get the minimum 40 percent support required to win outright in the first round. That would set up a runoff between the two leading candidates a week later. Though Mitzna and Ramon are seen as more dovish than Ben-Eliezer, the three stand for many of the same things. The soft-spoken Mitzna, 57, was born on Kibbutz Dovrat to German immigrant parents and grew up in the Haifa suburb of Kiryat Haim. At 15, he entered a prestigious army boarding school in Haifa, a year behind such luminaries as Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, who later became the Israeli army chief of staff and a Cabinet minister, and Matan Vilnai, a former deputy chief of staff and Labor Party Cabinet minister who today is one of Mitzna's major supporters. One of the most noteworthy points of Mitzna's army career was his clash with then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon during the 1982 Lebanon war. Sharon had taken much of the blame after Israel's Lebanese Christian allies massacred Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. When Mitzna heard Sharon defending himself by saying that similar things had happened before, he resigned in protest, and retracted it only under urg- ing from Prime Minister Menachem Begin. ANAL YSIS Battle-Hardened Mitzna received a medal for exemplary conduct for his coolness under fire in the 1967 Six-Day War: As his tank battalion approached its objective in Gaza, the commander's head was blown off by an Egyptian shell. Mitzna, then just 22, covered the body with a map of the Sinai peninsula and conducted the battle himself. He received another medal for bravery in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. When the first Palestinian intifada erupted in December 1987, Mitzna — by now a major general — was in the hot seat as head of Central Command, 11 / 15 2002 22 ❑