GENERAL elections in Israel tend to breed new political movements. Names like Shinui, the Centre Party and the Pensioners Party have all enjoyed brief bursts of enthusiasm in recent election cycles but none has managed to survive beyond their first election.

With only 12 weeks before Israelis head to the polls on February 10, the new flavour of the season is a left-wing movement that has the backing of a coalition of politicians, intellectuals and writers, including the author Amos Oz.

Even though the movement does not have a name, it is sure to be a force to be reckoned with.

Led by Haim Oron, the present chairman of Meretz - a left-wing social democratic party - others who have already signed up include the former Labour cabinet minister Uzi Baram, the former Labour Knesset speaker Avraham Burg, the Peace Now founder Tzali Reshef, a Hebrew University law professor, Mordechai Kremnitzer, and Gilad Sher, a senior former adviser to Ehud Barak when he was prime minister.

The early casualty is the Labour Party, whose support has collapsed under pressure from the Kadima Party of the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, on the right, and the new political party on the left.

According to Oz, the Labour Party - once the natural party of government in Israel under leaders such as David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres - is finished.

"I hope the expanded leftist movement will become a replacement for the Labour Party," Oz told the liberal broadsheet Haaretz on Sunday.

"The Labour Party has finished its historic role, it isn't putting forward a national agenda and it joins any coalition."

Oz hopes the new party will translate its early momentum and enthusiasm into a significant voting bloc inside the new Knesset, which includes former Labour MPs, environmentalists, Reform Jews and Arab Israelis.

The energy for rebuilding has not been confined to the left of politics. Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the centre-right opposition party Likud, has also succeeded in luring some big names back into the fold.