With the votes all counted, Labour Leader Avi Gabbay (who takes first place on the list and has the right to appoint a number two from outside the party if he chooses), joined the top five and other new candidates on the stage in Tel Aviv’s Exhibition Grounds.
Among all the smiles and hugs, it was easy to overlook the fact that many of them may not win a seat. Mr Gabbay’s speech promised that “we’ve shown we are fighters and we won’t be beaten so easily.”
But will any of this help revive the party in the polls?
In recent weeks, since Mr Gabbay unceremoniously announced that he was ending the Zionist Union alliance with Tzipi Livni’s Hatnuah party (now beneath the electoral threshold in all the polls), while Labour has hovered between five and seven seats in the next Knesset.
There have been calls for forming a joint list with Meretz, another endangered species on the left, but most Labour candidates seemed buoyant following the primary results and discounted such a possibility.
The deadline for parties joining forces is next Thursday, February 21, when the lists have to be presented to the Central Election Commission.
Other prospects of link-ups also appear remote. Shas leader Arye Deri announced on Sunday that his Charedi-Mizrahi party would not join forces with the Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism.
Another much-muted possibility of a centrist-right rival joining Likud is now almost certainly out of the question, as Likud party bylaws require a two-week notice for any such mergers.
The two main centrist parties, Benny Gantz’s Israel Resilence and Yesh Atid, led by Yair Lapid, have been discussing a joint list — but the talks are stuck because of Mr Lapid’s demand that, he serve part of the next term as prime minister, should they form a government. Mr Gantz has refused.
The merger likeliest to take place by next week’s deadline is among the religious right-wing parties Jewish Home, National Union and the Kahanist Otzma Yehudit. Talks between the three are ongoing.
In a briefing on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged religious journalists “not to lose the votes, because fragmentation on the right can will lose us the election and lead to a left-wing government”.
A senior official in Jewish Home predicted they would “almost certainly” iron out the differences with National Union and run jointly, adding: “There’s a much smaller chance we’ll find a way to do that with Otzma.”
