Ben Simon calls off Labor rebels - for now

A formal split in the Labor Party has been pushed off for now, after MK Daniel Ben Simon refused to join the four party "rebels" in launching a new faction despite attending the conference they held yesterday.

By law, MKs can only split off and be recognized as a new faction if they comprise at least one-third of their former party's representatives. Since Labor has 13 MKs, that means five are needed for a split.

The four rebels called their Tel Aviv conference to launch a new movement called The Democratic Platform. But though Ben Simon attended, he said he still wants to give party chairman and defense minister Ehud Barak another chance before quitting Labor.

Both Barak and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are expected to exert heavy pressure on Ben Simon not to quit. Since Labor is one of Netanyahu's key coalition partners, a split in the party would undermine the stability of his coalition.

Last month, Ben Simon resigned as party whip to protest Barak's leadership. This encouraged the rebels - Amir Peretz, Ophir Pines-Paz, Eitan Cabel and Yuli Tamir - to think they had possibly found their needed fifth member.

So far, however, he has proven reluctant. He debated until the last minute over whether to even come to the conference. When he finally did, he attacked Barak from the dais for having no political path and failing to evacuate illegal settlement outposts, but stressed that he is not yet ready to split the party.

"At the next conference, in another two or three months, if it has become clear that there is nothing to talk about, then it will be possible to launch the new movement," he said. "But let's give [Barak] a chance."

After the conference, he said that over the next few months, he plans to try to get Labor to leave the government. But if that fails, he said, he would agree to quit the party.

For the rebels, even if the split itself has been pushed off, yesterday's conference constituted a declaration of intent. A few hundred Labor activists came to express their support, including author Eli Amir and former ministers Uzi Baram and Ora Namir.

"I feel as if I were at a rebirth, or a new birth," Cabel said. "This gathering itself is the message. This is the end of the line for the Labor Party."