Mr Amram Mitzna has won the Israeli Labour Party's leadership election. Mr Mitzna was an unknown on the Israeli political stage a few months ago and won on a peace platform.
But polls predict a stinging defeat by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's hardline Likud party in January's general elections.
Last night Mr Mitzna emerged from Haifa city hall, where he has served as mayor of the port city since 1994 after a military career, to take the battered party by storm.
Nearly complete results from the voting gave Mr Mitzna 54 per cent, incumbent party leader Mr Binyamin Ben-Eliezer 37 per cent and Mr Haim Ramon about 7 per cent of the vote.
Mr Ben-Eliezer, who had served as Mr Sharon's defence minister, took the brunt of the dissatisfaction, repudiated by his own party in favour of Mr Mitzna, a first-time campaigner who favours far-reaching steps to disengage Israel from the Palestinians.
As the voting was in progress, Mr Mitzna said that if elected prime minister, he would order an evacuation of Jewish settlers and Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.
He said Israel would have to draw its own security border along the West Bank if the Palestinians refused to compromise.
Labour triggered the election call by quitting Sharon's "national unity" government over the issue of funding for Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
PA