Labor Knesset Member Sneh Appointed New Health Minister, Succeeding Ramon

Labor Knesset member Ephraim Sneh has been appointed Israel’s new health minister, filling a post that had remained vacant since Haim Ramon resigned in February in a dispute over health care reform.

Sneh, 49, is closely associated with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He won the health portfolio over stiff competition from other young Labor leaders.

His appointment as health minister may signal a first step on the ladder to a more senior post in the party.

Sneh succeeds Ramon, the maverick Labor politician who taught his party a painful lesson earlier this month when he snatched away the top Histadrut post from the party’s official candidate in a national election.

Ramon had resigned earlier in the year over the government’s refusal to establish a new national health insurance program that would have broken the link between the Histadrut labor federation and Kupat Holim, Israel’s largest health fund.

Sneh, a former head of the civil administration of the West Bank, had gained a dovish reputation and was once a close associate of Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.

But he now appears to be projecting a strong security image and is said to be firmly allied to Rabin.

He was sharply critical of Ramon’s association with the left-wing Meretz bloc, believing that it may have robbed Labor of its centrist, security-minded reputation.

Sneh, who was a doctor by training, became a career military officer and then joined the Labor Party in 1988. He was elected to the Knesset in 1992.

His father, Moshe Sneh, headed the Haganah, the forerunner of Israel’s armed forces, from 1941 to 1946 and later served for many years as a representative of the Communist Party in the Knesset.