Reserve Gen Amram Mitzna, mayor of the northern Israeli city of Haifa and the leading dove in Labour, was elected the centre-left party's new leader tonight after a meteoric rise on the political scene, an exit poll showed.
According to results broadcast on Israeli private television, Mr Mitzna won 57 per cent of the vote against 35 per cent for incumbent leader and hawkish former defence minister Mr Binyamin Ben Eliezer and eight per cent for MP Mr Haim Ramon.
The Mina Tzemach institute's results were issued as the polls by Labour's 110,000 cardholders closed.
Still a relative newcomer in Israeli politics, the 57-year-old Mr Mitzna has pulled off a spectacular rise to the top of his ailing party, while establishing himself as the leader of Labour's "doves".
He was elected on a pledge to close Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, rein in settlements in the West Bank and unilaterally separate from the Palestinians if a swift resumption of talks yields no results.
But despite his stunning triumph, the chances of a general election victory for the Haifa mayor, who supports peace talks with the Palestinians, remain slim against right-wing Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon.
"The country is tumbling toward the abyss and there is no light at the end of the tunnel," Mr Mitzna said in August when he announced his candidacy.
Storming out of political obscurity, he said he would stand at a time when the two-year Palestinian uprising had sunk into total deadlock, with Israeli forces commanded by his Labour rival, then-defence minister Mr Ben Eliezer, occupying almost the whole West Bank.
Mr Ben Eliezer finally led the party out of Mr Sharon's right-wing cabinet last month after 20 months of collaboration, triggering a general election to be held on January 28th in which Mr Sharon's Likud party is tipped to emerge as the main victor.
During its co-operation with Likud, Labour failed to come up with a distinct policy to salvage the Oslo peace accords it crafted with the Palestinians in 1993, which have been eroded by two years of violence and pronounced dead by Mr Sharon and the Israeli right.
"Force alone leads us nowhere," said Mr Mitzna in August, calling for a rapid return to talks with the Palestinians and claiming to be the inheritor of Labour's most revered peace-making general, slain premier Mr Yitzhak Rabin.
On November 12th, in a televised debate with his rivals Mr Ben Eliezer and Mr Ramon, Mitzna said: "I promise Israelis that we will separate ourselves from the Palestinians with peace, if that is possible, through negotiations.