Avi Gabbay, who won Monday’s runoff for the Labor Party leadership, is not the typical candidate to lead Israel’s largest left-wing party. Not only is Gabbay a relatively new name for the voters, but the path he had chosen so far for his political and business career is at odds with the ways of traditional Labor leaders: He served as environmental protection minister under a different, right-wing party, he sat in a right-wing government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, and before entering the political arena served as CEO of the biggest telecommunications firm in Israel.
On the eve of the runoff that will determine his political future, Gabbay can be seen as a complex and multifaceted character. The same person that had no problem sitting in a government accustomed to a diplomatic freeze now swears he is continuing the path of the late Yitzhak Rabin, and that he is unafraid to touch on the sensitive issue of East Jerusalem. His printed platform even states he would hand over Arab neighborhoods in the capital to the Palestinian Authority. [...]
Even in the business sector it is hard to identify the real Gabbay: He crossed the lines from the Finance Ministry’s budget department for a job at telecommunications monopoly Bezeq, and later fired workers while pocketing tens of millions of shekels for himself. On the other hand, all his colleagues at the firm described to Haaretz a sharp and well-liked manager who made the company more efficient and helped it grow while always treating people with respect. [...]
Kulanu officials note that Gabbay wasn’t always so adamant about Lieberman and his party. Before the 2015 elections, Kulanu and Yisrael Beiteinu had a surplus-vote agreement, which earned Kulanu a 10th seat and enabled it to demand a third ministerial post – for Gabbay. So what changed between then and May 2016? Gabbay’s close associates asserted that the appointment of Lieberman as defense minister following his support for Sgt. Elor Azaria, who executed a gravely wounded Palestinian assailant in Hebron, crossed a red line. Kulanu officials deem the resignation a cynical, carefully planned move, an attempt to differentiate himself from Kahlon and to find a gimmick allowing him to strike out on his own. [...]
Gabbay left Bezeq a young man who didn’t have to worry about earning a living. His 14 years there made him a very rich man. He reportedly earned 50 million shekels ($14.1 million). Gabbay told “Uvda” that the 175,000 shekels a month he was earning by the end of his tenure did not necessarily reflect his contribution to Bezeq. His years there gave him the privilege of being able to enter politics for the sake of ideology rather than for a livelihood. Also, it cannot be ruled out that without the enormous sums he earned, he could not have funded his current electoral campaign. His money has also allowed him a larger home in North Tel Aviv, where he lives with his wife Ayelet, a teaching coordinator at a Tel Aviv high school, and their three children. His friends say his wife is a great influence in his life. Some of them say she pushed him for years toward leftist positions.
No comments:
Post a Comment