He is on good terms with Israel's opposition Labour Party, and also with Israel's security forces.

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Israel's Labour Party, now in the ruling coalition, will also be choosing a leader.

ECONOMIST: America and the Middle East

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.

ECONOMIST: America and Israel

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.

ECONOMIST: Albright��s perilous debut

Ehud Barak, the defence minister, who leads the Labour party in Israel's ruling coalition, and was recently in Washington trying to heal relations, now says Mr Netanyahu must change his coalition if there is to be serious progress.

ECONOMIST: The two sides move crabwise as indirect negotiations begin

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

CNN: Sunday,

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

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.

ECONOMIST: Israel's new government

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