Pre-election polls give Zionist Union 8 seats as its MKs demand change
“We don’t want to be unemployed after the election. You have a responsibility to unite us and lead us.”
By GIL HOFFMANUpdated: OCTOBER 12, 2018 03:37Labor Party Chair Avi Gabbay(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Zionist Union MKs criticized party leader Avi Gabbay when the faction met for a strategy session in Ra’anana, amid polls predicting it would fall from 24 seats to only eight in the 2019 election.MKs Eitan Cabel, Amir Peretz and soon-to-be MK Moshe Mizrahi all spoke disparagingly at the meeting.“Let’s talk about the elephant in the room,” Cabel told Gabbay. “We don’t want to be unemployed after the election. “You have a responsibility to unite us and lead us.”Peretz said the Zionist Union was not sharpening the differences between it and other parties. Mizrahi, who will be sworn in next week in place of retiring MK Zouheir Bahloul, said: “We are our own worst enemy.”Gabbay lashed out at the criticism and accused Cabel of criticizing him anonymously and of being the unnamed MK who told Israel Radio this week that Gabbay was a “work accident” who was harming the party.“I am staying, and I am not going anywhere,” Gabbay said.Polls that included a new party led by former IDF chief of staff Benny Gantz found that the Zionist Union would be the main victim of him entering politics, leaving it with only eight seats.Channel Ten’s survey by pollster Camille Fuchs found that with 13 seats, Gantz’s party would become the second-largest behind Likud with 31. A Ma’agar Mohot poll taken for the Makor Rishon newspaper, however, predicted only eight seats for Gantz’s party.But a poll taken for the Zionist Union by its own strategist Stephan Miller had better news for Gabbay. The poll found that the public does not want a corrupt prime minister and that Netanyahu is seen as corrupt.Miller’s poll also found that the public is unsatisfied with the current security situation and does not feel the impact of the positive development of the economy.
The poll found that Israelis were still uninformed about Gabbay’s life story. Miller predicted in the meeting that the more the public would get to know Gabbay, the more their support for the party would rise.
