Israel's old left finds a new voice

Earlier, as a brigadier-general in 1982, he commanded the eastern front in Israel's Lebanon invasion but after the Sabra and Shatilla massacre declared he was resigning from the army to protest the handling of the war by Mr. Sharon, then the defense minister. The chief of staff at the time, Rafael Eitan, dissuaded him from doing so.

"There are some people, particularly in the media, who favor a more dovish approach by the Labor Party, who long for a sharper ideological distinction between Labor and Likud," says Uzi Benziman, a columnist for Ha'aretz.

The current Labor defense minister and Mitzna's rival for party leadership, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, "is perceived as following what Sharon says."

"Mitzna is a new face who still did not disappoint us. It seems that people are looking to him as a messiah who will solve our problems," adds Mr. Benziman.

Polls published Friday in Israel's Yediot Ahronot newspaper show Mitzna with 62 percent support compared to 32 percent for the current Labor leader, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer.

Sharon remains by far the most popular leader, and polls say he would defeat Mitzna by 50 percent to 30 percent. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, another Likud party hopeful, would also defeat Mitzna, with 46 percent to 35 percent.

If he bests Ben-Eliezer in a November primary, Mitzna's chances of becoming prime minister may hinge on the degree of tranquility at the time of the election, which will be held in October 2003 at the latest.

Whether there are terrorist attacks, peace initiatives, or a major US military action in Iraq could all influence the contest, analysts say. "Mitzna is definitely worth keeping an eye on," says Joseph Alpher, former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies.

Not everyone agrees. One commentator, Uri Orbach, wrote in Yediot Ahronot last week that Mitzna, who raised his children on Kibbutz Ein Gev in northern Israel, is an anachronism, a man who embodies the hopes of the old, left-wing Ashkenazi (European-Jewish) establishment that once controlled the country. "He is the darling son of those people who feel that the country and Labor party have been taken away from them."

"But who from among those who voted for Sharon would support a crazed dove like him for prime minister?" Orbach asked.

One advantage Mitzna might have is his ability to enlist the support of Israel's Arab citizens, who make up 20 percent of the population. In the last elections, Arab voters stayed away in droves to protest Prime Minister Ehud Barak's tough policies against the intifada and the shooting of 13 Arab demonstrators by police.

Thanks in part to Mitzna, Jewish-Arab relations in Haifa, which has a 10 percent Arab minority, have remained civil throughout the intifada, according to Shmuel Gelbhardt, an opposition city councilor from the environmentalist Green Party.

"He has sympathy and empathy for the Arab minority, but he has only enmity for the environmentalists," Gelbhardt says. Gelbhardt accuses Mitzna of monopolizing decisionmaking and of turning the city council into a "rubber stamp."

But he predicts the mayor would make a good national leader. "Security is his strong point and in government there would be more checks and balances," he says.

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