Amram Mitzna

Amram Mitzna (2009)

Amram Mitzna ( Hebrew עמרם מצנע, also Mizna ; * February 20, 1945 in Kibbutz Dowrat ) is an Israeli politician of German descent. In 2003 he was candidate for prime minister of the Israeli Labor Party Avoda .

Life

Amram Mitzna studied geography and political science before joining the Israeli army in 1963. He was wounded in the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War . In 1967 he received an award for his exemplary behavior as a tank officer.

In September 1982 he wrote a letter to the then Chief of Staff describing his loss of confidence in Defense Minister Ariel Sharon because of his behavior during the invasion of Lebanon . Sharon then demanded his dismissal, but this was averted through the mediation of Prime Minister Menachem Begin .

At the beginning of the first Intifada , Mitzna, as the commandant of the Central Command, was also responsible for the occupied territories. In 1990 he became chief of the planning department of the Israeli army. In 1993 he resigned from the army as major general, seeing no chance of being promoted to chief of staff.

Mitzna became mayor of Haifa in November 1993 after beating his opponent Aryeh Gurel. He was also able to win the election for a second term. In his two terms in office, he ruled in a grand coalition with the Likud .

As mayor, Mitzna promoted construction projects by entrepreneurs and investors by facilitating the legal planning process. This approach met with strong protests from environmental organizations.

During his tenure, Mitzna had good relations with all population groups, including Arabs , Russian immigrants and religious Jews; at the same time he did not shy away from confrontation with the ultra-Orthodox Jews.

In August 2002 Mitzna announced his candidacy for the chairmanship of the Labor Party; he won the election. As a result, he ran in the 16th elections to the Knesset in 2003 for the office of Prime Minister against Ariel Sharon , but was defeated.

In 2005, Mitzna withdrew from the Knesset while volunteering as mayor of Yeroham , a small town in the Negev . This came after the interior minister suspended the incumbent mayor of Yerekhams, Baruch Elmakayes , for poor financial management. Mitzna's role is primarily to financially rehabilitate the small town. Some critics greatly appreciate this courageous move and compare Mitzna to Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion , who withdrew from politics to move to Sde Boker in the Negev desert.

literature

• Amram Mitzna , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 39/2003 from September 15, 2003, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

• Amram Mitzna on www.knesset.gov.il (English)