Product Code Database
Meretz (, ; Meretz (Vigour) Times of Israel ) was a left-wing political party in Israel. The party was formed in 1992 by the merger of Ratz, Mapam and Shinui, and was at its peak between 1992 and 1996 when it had 12 seats. It had no seats in the Knesset following its failure to pass the electoral threshold in the 2022 elections, the only time it failed to win seats in the Knesset.
Meretz was a Social democracy and Secularism party emphasising a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, social justice, human rights (especially for religious, ethnic and sexual minorities), religious freedom and environmentalism. The party was a member of the Progressive Alliance and Socialist International, and was an observer member of the Party of European Socialists. The party's position on Zionism was disputed.
On 30 June 2024 the party agreed to merge with the Israeli Labor Party to form a new party, the Democrats. Under the merger agreement, there will be one Meretz representative in every four spots on the new party's electoral list as well as on the party bodies, and there will also be representation for Meretz's municipal factions. The agreement was ratified at a convention of delegates from both Meretz and Labor on 12 July 2024. Under the agreement, Meretz and Labor continue as separate corporate and budgetary entities, and their factions in the Histadrut, municipal councils and other bodies outside the Knesset will not be unified at this stage but will cooperate.
After the 1996 elections, in which Meretz lost a quarter of its seats, Aloni lost an internal leadership election to Yossi Sarid and retired, and the three parties decided to officially merge into a single entity by 1997. Although Shinui leader Amnon Rubinstein supported the merger, most Shinui members rejected it; once the merger became effective, part of Shinui (under the leadership of Rubinstein) broke away to participate in the merger, while the party mainstream elected Avraham Poraz as the new party leader and re-established Shinui as an independent movement. Later in the Knesset session, David Zucker also left the party to sit as an independent MK.
The 1999 elections saw the party regain its former strength, picking up 10 seats, including the first-ever female Israeli Arab MK, Hussniya Jabara, while Shinui (now effectively led by TV celebrity journalist Tommy Lapid, although Poraz remained its formal leader) won six seats. Meretz was invited into Ehud Barak's coalition, with Sarid becoming Education Minister, Ran Cohen Minister of Industry and Trade and Haim Oron Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development. However, after Likud leader Ariel Sharon defeated Barak in a special Prime Ministerial election in 2001, Meretz left the government.
On 22 October 2002, Meretz MK Uzi Even made history by becoming the first openly Homosexuality Member of Knesset, after Amnon Rubinstein retired. This created a vacancy and Even was next on the Meretz list. His term lasted less than three months, however, as the Knesset was dissolved in January 2003. Even's entry to the Knesset was met by mixed reactions from the Haredi Judaism parties; Shas's Nissim Ze'ev was the harshest, saying Even "symbolized the bestialization of humanity", adding that he should be "hidden under the carpet" and banned from entering the Knesset.
For the 2003 elections, Meretz were joined by Roman Bronfman's Democratic Choice. However, the party shrank in representation again, this time to just six seats. Sarid immediately took responsibility and resigned from leadership, though he did not retire from the Knesset and continued serving as an MK, before stepping down before the 2006 elections.
In December 2003, Meretz was disbanded, to merge with Yossi Beilin's non-parliamentary Shahar () movement. The original name suggested for the new party was Ya'ad (, Goal), but was not used because it sounded like the Russian language word for poison ("yad"), and it was feared that it might alienate Israel's one million Russian-speaking voters (although there had been two parties previously in Israel using the name – Ya'ad and Ya'ad – Civil Rights Movement, the latter ironically a forerunner of Meretz, they both existed before large-scale immigration from the Soviet Union). Instead, the name Yachad (Hebrew: יח"ד) was chosen. As well as meaning "Together", it is also a Hebrew acronym for Social Democratic Israel (Hebrew: , Yisrael Hevratit Demokratit).
The new party was established to unite and resuscitate the Israeli Zionist peace camp, which had been soundly defeated in the 2003 elections (dropping from 56 Knesset members in 1992 to 24 in 2003) following the Al-Aqsa Intifada. The party's purpose was to unite a variety of dovish Zionist movements with the dovish wing of the Labor Party. However, the efforts were largely unsuccessful as, except for the original Meretz, Shahar and Democratic Choice, no other movement joined the new party. It has suffered from declining popular interest in left-wing peace movements, and only 20,000 people are now registered members of the party, half the number who were before the 1999 party primaries.
In March 2004, Yossi Beilin was elected party leader, defeating Ran Cohen, and started a two-year term as the first chairman of Yachad. In July 2005, the party decided to change its name to Meretz-Yachad, because opinion polls revealed that the name Yachad was not recognisable to the Israeli public and that they preferred the old name Meretz. The chairman Beilin opposed the motion to revert the name to Meretz and a compromise between the old and new names, Meretz-Yachad, was agreed upon.
However, in the 2006 election campaign, the party dropped the Yachad part of its name, running as just Meretz, under the slogan "Meretz on the left, the Human in the centre". Nevertheless, it failed to stop the party's decline, as they won just five seats. In 2007, Tzvia Greenfield, sixth on the party list, became the first-ever female Haredi Judaism Knesset member, following Yossi Beilin's decision to retire from politics.
In March 2008, internal elections for the chairman of the party were held. At an early stage, Yossi Beilin, Zehava Galon and Ran Cohen announced their bids. After Haim Oron announced his bid in December 2007, Beilin withdrew his bid and announced his support for him. Oron went on to win the internal elections held on 18 March 2008 with 54.5% of the vote, defeating Ran Cohen (27.1%) and Zehava Galon (18.1%) to become Meretz's new chairman.
On 22 December 2008, Meretz finalized its merger with Hatnua HaHadasha ("The New Movement") for the 2009 Israeli elections.
Following the party's failure in the 2009 legislative elections, some of the party members called for the resignation of the party chairman Haim Oron and to give way for Zehava Galon. Haim Oron indeed left the Knesset on 23 March 2011 and later left the chairmanship of the party. As a result, MKs Zehava Galon, Ilan Gilon, and youth activist Ori Ophir began campaigning to win the position of party chairman. The primaries were held on 7 February 2012 for the position of the party's chairman; Gal-On was elected as the chairman with 60.6% of the votes, whilst Ilan Gilon was second with 36.6%, and Uri Ofir was third with 2.8%.
In the 2013 legislative election, Meretz received 4.5% of the national vote, winning six seats. On 8 December 2014, Meretz signed a surplus-vote agreement with the Labor Party for the upcoming 2015 legislative election, the latter set to contest the election as the Zionist Union. On 19 January 2015, Meretz held its primaries at a meeting of its 1,000-member central committee in the Tel Aviv Convention Center: Zehava Galon was re-elected party leader, whilst MK Nitzan Horowitz chose not to stand for re-election.
In 2015, as preliminary results of the Knesset elections indicated that the party representation would be reduced, Zehava Galon announced that she would resign as chairperson of Meretz as soon as a successor was chosen, and from the Knesset, in order to open a place for Tamar Zandberg, the party's fifth place-candidate who appeared to have lost her seat. Zandberg, Ilan Gilon, and others urged Gal-On to reconsider her decision. However, once absentee and soldier ballots were counted, Meretz gained a fifth seat, negating the premise for Gal-On's earlier announcement, and she announced that she would continue as party leader, saying: "Meretz received a fifth seat from young supporters, from Israeli soldiers, who raised the party's rate of support. That allowed Meretz to maintain its strength in terms of the number of voters – some 170,000 – compared with the last election. Under the circumstances, and against all odds, that is a success."
Tamar Zandberg became the leader of Meretz in 2018. In February 2019, Meretz held its first-ever open primary contest. Eighty-six percent of party members cast votes. Ilan Gilon won first place; he will be placed second on the party's Knesset slate, behind party leader Tamar Zandberg. Michal Rozin came in second place, followed by Issawi Frej and Ali Salalha. In the April 2019 elections, the party won four seats.
In July 2019, Meretz agreed to form an electoral union, called the Democratic Union, with Ehud Barak's Israel Democratic Party and breakaway Labor MK Stav Shaffir for the September elections, a decision ratified on 29 July. The alliance won five seats, three of them going to Meretz. Prior to the March 2020 elections, the party joined an alliance with Labor and Gesher, which won seven seats, three of them held by Meretz.
After winning six seats in the March 2021 elections, Meretz joined a coalition government alongside Yesh Atid, Blue and White, Yamina, the Labor Party, Yisrael Beiteinu, New Hope and the United Arab List. Three Meretz MKs became ministers, with Horowitz becoming Minister of Health, Zandberg Minister of Environmental Protection and Issawi Frej Minister of Regional Cooperation. This is the first time Meretz has returned to government since 2000.
The party did not win any seats in the 2022 elections under the leadership of returning chairwoman Zehava Galon, missing the electoral threshold by 3,800 votes, marking the first time that the party did not retain Knesset seats in an election. The party's local candidates reportedly struggled financially since the 2022 election, owing to the party's lack of representation in the Knesset.
In addition to being a full member of Socialist International and the Progressive Alliance, it participated in Global Greens conferences. Weapons Can't Be Green, Haaretz, 19 May 2008. "'The main problems occupying most party representatives are too much traffic and air pollution, producing electricity from renewable sources, and waste management', says Hadas Shachnai of the Green Party, who represented Israel along with Mosi Raz of Meretz and environmental activist Eran Binyamini." In the international media, Meretz was described as left-wing, social democratic, dovish, secularism, civil libertarian and anti-occupation.
Meretz protested against the 2018 and petitioned the Supreme Court of Israel to invalidate the legislation, arguing it was discriminatory against Arabs and the Druze.
| 1 | Shulamit Aloni | 1992 | 1996 | 1992 | ||
| 2 | Yossi Sarid | 1996 | 2003 | 1996, 1999, 2003 | 1996, 1999 | |
| 3 | Yossi Beilin | 2004 | 2008 | 2006 | 2004 | |
| 4 | Haim Oron | 2008 | 2012 | 2009 | 2008 | |
| 5 | Zehava Galon | 2012 | 2018 | 2013, 2015 | 2012, 2015 | |
| 6 | Tamar Zandberg | 2018 | 2019 | 2019 (Apr) | 2018 | |
| 7 | Nitzan Horowitz | 2019 | 2022 | 2019 (Sep), 2020, 2021 | 2019 | |
| (5) | Zehava Galon | 2022 | 2022 | 2022 | 2022 |
| 1992 | Shulamit Aloni | 250,667 | 9.58 (#3) | 2 | ||
| 1996 | Yossi Sarid | 226,275 | 7.41 (#5) | 3 | ||
| 1999 | 253,525 | 7.66 (#4) | 1 | |||
| 2003 | 164,122 | 5.21 (#6) | 4 | |||
| 2006 | Yossi Beilin | 118,302 | 3.77 (#9) | 1 | ||
| 2009 | Haim Oron | 99,611 | 2.95 (#10) | 2 | ||
| 2013 | Zehava Galon | 172,403 | 4.55 (#8) | 3 | ||
| 2015 | 165,529 | 3.93 (#10) | 1 | |||
| Apr 2019 | Tamar Zandberg | 156,473 | 3.63 (#9) | 1 | ||
| Sep 2019 | Nitzan Horowitz | Part of the Democratic Union | 1 | |||
| 2020 | With Labor and Gesher | |||||
| 2021 | 202,218 | 4.59 (#12) | 3 | |||
| 2022 | Zehava Galon | 150,793 | 3.16 (#11) | 6 | ||
Hashomer Hatzair, a progressivism Zionist youth movement with branches in many countries, was informally associated with Meretz; it had previously been affiliated with Mapam.
American Jewish comedian Sarah Silverman, whose sister Susan Silverman moved from the US to Israel and is a Reform rabbi there, asked Israeli voters to choose Meretz in the 2015 election.
In October 2024 the US affiliate of the World Union of Meretz, Partners for Progressive Israel, was the first Zionist group in the United States to call on the United States government to suspend its sale of offensive arms to Israel, calling on the American government to redirect its aid to Israel to peacebuilding efforts.
|
|
