Labor's Cabel calls on party chairman Gabbay to consider stepping down

"In the business world, he would have returned the keys a long time ago."

Eitan Cabel (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Eitan Cabel
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Knesset member and Labor Party activist Eitan Cabel called on party chairman Avi Gabbay to consider stepping down from his role as party head, in an interview on Army Radio Thursday.
"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."
Cabel's comments follow days of strife in the party after Gabbay publicly broke Labor's partnership with Tzipi Livni's Hatnua, 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 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.”
Gil Hoffman contributed to this report.