The arrival of Amram Mitzna on the national political scene is stirring interest in Israel and abroad.
The Egyptian President this week invited the new leader of the Labour Party to visit him in Cairo. Hosni Mubarak apparently sees the prospect of Mr Mitzna becoming prime minister as offering hope for a break in the deadlock in Israeli-Palestinian relations.
And when the Foreign Press Association in Israel hosted Mr Mitzna in Jerusalem this week,the hall was filled to capacity.
"I bring a new hope,"he told the journalists."And I hope this new hope,new positive horizon,will drive also the Palestinians to take steps,to do something,to stop terrorism. Enough is enough. We have to stop the bloodshed and sit,to negotiate,to talk."
Mr Mitzna,57,said that in office he would immediately pull all troops and Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip,leaving the area under full Palestinian control.
He would then try to reach a peace treaty with the Palestinians within a year,but if the talks failed Israel would withdraw unilaterally from most of the West Bank also.
"My program is to disengage ourselves from the Palestinians. This is the key to my strategy. We will disintegrate ourselves from the Palestinians,whether it will be by negotiations,discussions or a unilateral approach,"he said.
A Palestinian cabinet minister,Nabil Shaath,agreed that the peace talks must be revived.
"We would like to see a leadership that is committed to the peace process - a leadership that follows on the track of the late prime minister[Yitzhak] Rabin who signed the peace of the brave with President[Yasser] Arafat,"he said,referring to the Israeli-Palestinian peace accord of 1993.
But it is not clear whether Mr Mitzna has the ability to win an election or to take on the running of a national government.
Born on a kibbutz - one of the collective farms that are bastions of leftist and secular thinking - he was a career army officer before becoming mayor of Haifa in 1993.
As a general during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982,he did something that seems to have set his course for the next 20 years.
After Israeli-backed Lebanese Christian militia groups massacred Palestinian refugees at the Sabra and Shatilla camps in Beirut,Mr Mitzna refused to continue serving under the then defence minister,Ariel Sharon - who is now Prime Minister and Mr Mitzna's opponent in the election that will take place in late January.
Mr Mitzna returned to the army after Mr Sharon left the Defence Ministry and became known as an uncompromising co-ordinator of the army's activities in the West Bank during the first Palestinian intifada,which began in 1987.
He is hoping these dual sides of his character - tough general and supporter of peace talks - will help to win him widespread support.
But Moshe Arens,a former defence minister and a member of Mr Sharon's Likud party,said that while Mr Mitzna may have arrived on the national political scene like a rocket,he faced defeat at the polls and could disappear just as quickly.
The Labour stalwart Shimon Peres said Mr Mitzna faced the task of unifying the party,which has been racked by division since it lost office nearly two years ago.
"He has to unify the ranks and the files of the country,"Mr Peres said."We shall stand beside him. The country needs Labour as a vision,not only as a history. We need a strong Labour Party for the future and not just for its very brilliant past."
Labour supporters hope Mr Mitzna will achieve a comprehensive peace agreement or at least get Israel out of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
But those on the right say Mr Mitzna has an outdated far-left ideology that has been discredited by the past two years of violence.
And while the bloodshed continues,it is hard for most Israelis to believe that peace talks will be revived in the near future,let alone succeed.
That may be why in recent days Mr Mitzna has taken to attacking Mr Arafat publicly - a move that could ease the concerns of some undecided voters.
Observers believe it is also an indication that the Labour Party leader already acknowledges he has a lot of ground to make up if he is to have any chance of unseating the Likud party on January 28.