In 1983, Labour Party candidate Chaim Herzog was elected president of Israel.

CNN: Sunday,

The chairwoman of the Labour party, Shelly Yacimovich, and the chairman of the Kadima party, Shaul Mofaz, were both quick to call on Israel's centrist parties to unite to challenge the new right-wing list.

BBC: Israel's Likud Party and Yisrael Beitenu to join forces

On the whole, America's Jewry has been a liberal body, aligning itself with Israel's Labour Party rather than the Likud Party of the present prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.

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Many Israelis blame Oslo, and its architects in Israel's Labour Party, for all the acts of terrorism that have been perpetrated since it was signed, including the most recent bombings.

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Likud was originally set up in 1973 to challenge the Labour party, the latest in a series of centre-left parties which had governed Israel since its creation in 1948.

BBC: Guide to Israel's political parties

He is also said to have undertaken, as the price for drawing the less hawkish Labour party into his coalition, that he would abide by previous agreements made by Israel with the Palestinians, most of which acknowledge that the Palestinians should have their own state.

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The scion of a patrician family his uncle was Abba Eban, a longtime foreign minister, and his father, Chaim, was Israel's president Mr Herzog says Labour must recover the social democratic values of the party's founding fathers.

ECONOMIST: Israeli politics: Can the doves take off again? | The