INTERNATIONAL POLICY ANALYSIS Quo vadis Avoda? Comments on the State of Affairs of the Labor Party and the Israeli Left DR. RALF HEXEL July 2010 The Israeli left-wing parties(Avoda, Meretz) are facing an existential crisis and there's no end in sight. Both parties lack the political will and political creativity to develop sustain­able new perspectives; Avoda and Meretz are no longer the leading political voices of the Israeli peace camp. It is Kadima they lost that prominent role to. And with it, they lost their political substance; As a result of a near uninterrupted government participation over the past ten years, combined with a discrepancy between word and deed in its policy, Avoda lost its key po­litical asset: its credibility; The political and social footing of the left-wing parties has shrunk dramatically. Kadima is ousting them from power in the middle classes and they are finding even less support among the religious moderates and fringe groups such as the Arab community and the Israelis of Russian decent; The Israeli Left is intellectually uninspired and politically speechless, and unable to develop compelling alternatives to right-wing policies; Kadima is not a center-left party, but a centrist party. Kadima is not a solution to the Left's problems. Only the Left can reinvent itself.