Israel's HaDemokratim party starts campaign for October election

Israel's largest leftist party launched its campaign on Monday for the legislative election due in October, after choosing its list of candidates in primaries.

HaDemokratim, or the Democrats, is led by former deputy military chief of staff Yair Golan. The party is a merger of Israel's historic Labour Party and Meretz, which failed to pass the electoral threshold in 2022.

The party was projected in the latest polls to win about 10 seats. It is the only non-Arab party known to support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to the source. It is also described as the heir to Mapai, the party of Israel's founder and veteran leader David Ben Gurion.

The left suffered its worst result in the 2022 election, when it won four seats. Key names on the new list include lawyer Gaby Lasky, a former secretary general of the anti-settlement NGO Peace Now, and Moshe Radman, one of the leaders of the protest movement against the outgoing government.

At the campaign launch in Tel Aviv, Golan appeared with the new candidates and said the party's priority would be the creation of a commission of inquiry into the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.