Report: Labor Party members gather signatures to oust Gabbay
Earlier in the day, Labor MK Eitan Cabel called on party chairman Gabbay to consider stepping down from his role as party head.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFUpdated: JANUARY 3, 2019 14:28Avi Gabbay speaking at AIPAC, March 4, 2018(photo credit: ZIONIST UNION SPOKESMAN)
Labor Party activists have begun collecting signatures to replace Avi Gabbay following the split within the Zionist Union and Labor's decline in the polls.Earlier in the day, Labor MK Eitan Cabel called on Gabbay to consider stepping down from his role as party head."In the business world, he would have returned the keys a long time ago," Cabel said. "We can't let the Labor Party perish."Labor released a statement in response attacking Cabel. "His subversiveness is nothing new," the statement said. "Cabel is the king of yes-and-no waffling; one thing and its opposite, and then the opposite of the opposite."MK Yossi Yona (Labor) defended Cabel's statement, saying: "Cabel was speaking from his heart out of a true concern for the future of his political home.""Eitan Cabel is one of the most important Knesset members overall, and of Labor in particular," Yona said.Cabel's comments follow days of strife in the party after Gabbay publicly broke Labor's partnership with Tzipi Livni's Hatnua Party, which together had formed the Zionist Union faction in the Knesset. Livni, sitting next to him, had not been informed in advance of Gabbay's televised announcement.Since Gabbay’s July 2017 election as Labor leader, Livni would only say that “according to the agreement between us, he is our candidate for prime minister.” When The Jerusalem Post asked her on Tuesday whether she ever truly thought he would be prime minister, Livni politely declined to respond.But in an Army Radio interview on Wednesday morning, she revealed what she had believed all along.“Everyone who saw what happened yesterday knows he is not a candidate for prime minister,” she said. “He wants to be that - but he has no particular ideology.”
