Former journalist elected Israel's Labour leader

JERUSALEM, Sept 22(BSS/AFP) - Former TV journalist Shelly Yacimovich was elected Wednesday as the new leader of Israel's Labour party, defeating former union leader Amir Peretz in a run-off.

The 51-year-old Yacimovich secured 56 percent of the vote, compared to Peretz' 46, to take the helm of the ailing party, according to results reported by public radio as only a few votes remained to be tallied.

Peretz conceded defeat and congratulated the new chairwoman, assuring her of his full cooperation.

The once-mighty party, now reduced to eight seats in the 120-member parliament, has been without a chairman since Defence Minister Ehud Barak jumped ship in January to form the centrist Independence movement.

Yitzhak Herzog, a Labour party leader, said the results "revealed that the party was divided and will need to overcome this obstacle and unite in order to regain its status as a significant player on the political scene."

Tel Aviv-born Yacimovich becomes the second woman to lead the Labour party after Golda Meir, who held the job from 1969 to 1974.

She benefited from wide support in the media and was endorsed by Israel's powerful Histradrut trade union federation, scoring her best results in the country's big cities.

The former journalist has a reputation as a pragmatist and a good debater.

She made her name denouncing social injustices but remained very cautious during her campaigning on major controversial issues such as the nature of an eventual peace deal with the Palestinians.

While the left wing of her party angrily opposed the continuation of Jewish settlement building in the West Bank, Tel Aviv-born Yacimovich also refused to denounce the action.

Peretz, who once headed Histadrut, was defence minister during the 2006 Lebanon war, which claimed the lives of 1,200 people in Lebanon, mainly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, and was widely considered a failure by Israelis.

He stepped down as both defence minister and leader of the Labour party the following year.

"The two candidates who have reached the home stretch... have done so in a long and seemingly Sisyphean campaign, with boundless energy and unlimited ambition," a commentary in the left-leaning Haaretz read.

"Peretz proved once again what the political arena already knew -- he is an unparalleled campaigner. Like the phoenix, he arose from the ruins of his political career."

Eventually, it was the woman he himself pushed into the Labour party limelight a few years who defeated him.

Yacimovich, the champion of social causes, could ride a wave of popular discontent over unemployment to bring her party back to the fore.

According to opinion polls, Labour could secure 22 seats in the Knesset under her leadership and recover from its worst ever performance in 2009.

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