For years, the Labor Party has been marching, consciously and deliberately, to its demise. It could have stopped several times in the course of its march, discovering it had chosen the wrong path and returned to the right one. It did not do so. On the contrary, it led the camp of Zionist activism and political realism from near total hegemony in the pre-state Yishuv and the first three decades of the state to gradual disappearance, now left at merely 13 Knesset seats.

The party's three consecutive failures at the polls in the past decade (two of them under Ehud Barak's leadership) did not result from public-relations failures or from badly run campaigns. In light of its abandonment of its historic calling, the last of the Mohicans - mostly former Mapai and Alignment members - did the party a favor by casting the party their loyal votes.

The party that boasted of being unique and goal-oriented has become devoted to alien, fashionable ideas that are diametrically opposed to its Zionist roots and former activism. In deteriorating from bad to worse, the party lost its characteristic ability to analyze the real situation and find a realistic, visionary solution to Israel's complex problems. When Labor lost this talent and joined up with people and ideas foreign to its nature and roots, those who supported its historic path turned their backs on the party.

In its political path, Labor, the successor to the activist Mapai, became the leader of the concessionary and confused ideology of the party that had always been to its left - Mapam. Instead of rejecting this ideology, as Mapai did in the early years of the state, it adopted Mapam's conciliatory path about 30 years later and in effect became its successor, mainly promoting the idea of the Palestinian state and adopting a defensive policy in the war on terror.

In fact, the Israeli public is neither right wing nor left wing - it is realistic. In the recent elections, the majority did not vote for a political "right," but for those who analyze the situation in a practical manner and offer realistic ways of dealing with terror, the Iranian threat and the economic crisis. The idea of two states for two peoples, which Labor has adopted as its principal platform, failed not because of ideological opposition, but because the public realized that the Palestinians have no intention of implementing such a solution, but are using it to weaken Israel internally and externally.

Defeatism has replaced activism in the Labor Party, which is weakening from one election to the next. Sitting in the opposition "to rehabilitate the party" will not rescue it from its existential crisis. In the opposition, the rhetoric of Shelly Yachimovich, Daniel Ben Simon and Ophir Pines-Paz will situate the party on the extreme left (the number of Knesset seats won by Meretz proves how popular that policy would be) and will erode its strength even more. The only alternative remaining, that is, if Labor wants to survive, is to return to its historic calling.

Labor's extreme left-wing branch threatens that if Barak joins the coalition, that will be the end of the party. That is doubtful, but it is certain that the only political profile the party will be able to present - after all, it's a leftist opposition - will mirror that of Meretz. In the next election, Labor and Meretz will probably run together and win fewer seats than the two combined have at present. That will put another nail in the coffin of the two historic parties, Mapai and Mapam. There was a time when these two parties enjoyed an absolute majority in the Knesset.