Gahal
| Gahal גח"ל |
|
|---|---|
| Leader | Menachem Begin |
| Founded | 25 May 1965 |
| Dissolved | 1973 |
| Merged into | Likud |
| Newspaper | HaYom |
| Ideology | Right-wing |
| Alliance of | Herut and the Liberal Party |
| Most seats | 26 (1965-1967, 1969-1973) |
| Fewest seats | 22 (1969) |
| Election symbol | |
| חל | |
| Politics of Israel Political parties Elections |
|
Gahal (Hebrew: גח"ל, an acronym for Gush Herut-Liberalim (Hebrew: גוש חרות-ליברלים), lit. Herut-Liberals Bloc) was the major right-wing political faction in Israel led by Menachem Begin from its founding in 1965 until it merged into Likud in 1973.
Contents |
[edit] Background
Gahal was formed by an alliance of Herut and the Liberal Party towards the end of the fifth Knesset in preparation for the 1965 elections. The alliance brought together the only two right-wing parties in the Knesset, each with 17 seats at the time. The Liberal Party had only been formed in 1961 by a merger of the General Zionists and the Progressive Party.
However, several former Liberal Party members were unhappy with the alliance, identifying Herut and its leader, Menachem Begin as too right-wing. As a result, seven MKs broke away from the Liberal Party to form the Independent Liberals, which later merged into the left-wing Alignment. Nevertheless, the new party went into the elections with 27 seats, just seven less than Mapai, the party which had dominated Israeli politics since independence, although Mapai also had been reduced in size due to a breakaway of 8 MKs led by David Ben-Gurion to found Rafi.
Led by Begin, in its first electoral test Gahal won 26 seats. However, it was outperformed by the Alignment (a new left-wing alliance of Mapai and Ahdut HaAvoda), which won 46 seats. The party was reduced in strength when three Gahal MKs broke away to form the Free Centre, and a fourth later left.
During the Six-Day War, Alignment leader and Prime Minister Levi Eshkol invited Gahal to join a national unity government. The party remained in the government after the war, and kept its place when Golda Meir became Prime Minister following Eshkol's death in 1969.
In the October 1969 elections, Gahal maintained its 26-seat strength, but was comprehensively beaten by the Alignment, which won 56, in the best-ever election performance in Israeli political history. Nevertheless, it remained within the national unity government. The announcement of the Rogers Plan on December 9 had alarmed Menachem Begin sufficiently to cause the Herut faction to stop haggling with the Labor Party and accept the six cabinet seats offered in the new government. At the UN, a similar American proposal to Jordan on December 18, explicitly calling for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank removed any remaining differences with the prime minister, since they both saw this as a challenge requiring a blunt and energetic response.[1] Gahal pulled out of the coalition in August 1970 however, after the government announced its support for the Rogers Plan. Although the government later retracted its support for the plan, Gahal did not rejoin the coalition.
Before the 1973 elections, Gahal merged with several smaller right-wing parties, including its former breakaway, the Free Centre, the National List (a small party founded by Ben-Gurion after he had left Rafi) and the non-parliamentary Movement for Greater Israel. The new party, also headed by Begin, was called Likud, the Hebrew word for Consolidation.
Though Likud failed to overcome the Alignment in the 1973 elections, it comfortably won the next election in 1977, ousting the left from power for the first time in Israel's history.
[edit] Knesset members
| Knesset (MKs) |
Knesset Members |
|---|---|
| 5th (27) |
Zalman Abramov, Aryeh Altman, Binyamin Arditi, Binyamin Avniel, Yohanan Bader, Menachem Begin, Aryeh Ben-Eliezer, Peretz Bernstein, Haim Cohen-Meguri, Aharon Goldstein, Yitzhak Klinghoffer, Yosef Kremerman, Haim Landau, Nahum Levin, Eliyahu Meridor, Ya'akov Meridor, Shlomo Perlstein, Esther Raziel-Naor, Elimelekh Rimalt, Yosef Sapir, Yosef Serlin, Shabtai Shikhman, Yosef Shofman, Eliezer Shostak, Avraham Tiar, Baruch Uziel, Zvi Zimmerman |
| 6th (26 –4) |
Zalman Abramov, Binyamin Avniel, Yohanan Bader, Menachem Begin, Aryeh Ben-Eliezer, Haim Cohen-Meguri, Aharon Goldstein, Yitzhak Klinghoffer, Yosef Kremerman, Haim Landau, Eliyahu Meridor*, Ya'akov Meridor, Shlomo Perlstein, Esther Raziel-Naor, Elimelekh Rimalt, Yosef Sapir, Yosef Serlin, Yosef Shofman, Mordechai-Haim Stern, Yosef Tamir, Baruch Uziel, Menachem Yedid, Zvi Zimmerman – Eliezer Shostak, Shmuel Tamir, Avraham Tiar, Shlomo Cohen-Tzidon* (replaced Eliyahu Meridor) (to the Free Centre) |
| 7th (26) |
Zalman Abramov, Yoram Aridor, Yohanan Bader, Menachem Begin, Aryeh Ben-Eliezer (replaced by Gideon Patt), Haim Corfu, Simha Erlich, Aharon Goldstein, Binyamin Halevi, Avraham Katz, Ben-Zion Keshet, Yitzhak Klinghoffer, Yosef Kremerman, Haim Landau, David Levy, Dov Milman, Ya'akov Nehushtan, Moshe Nissim, Esther Raziel-Naor, Elimelekh Rimalt, Yosef Sapir (replaced by Matityahu Drobles), Yosef Serlin, Avraham Shekhterman, Yosef Tamir, Menachem Yedid, Zvi Zimmerman |
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.jstor.org/stable/4328055?seq=12 US-Soviet Negotiations of 1969 and the Rogers Plan, David A. Korn, Middle East, Journal, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Winter, 1990), pp. 37-50, Middle East Institute
[edit] External links
- Gahal Knesset website
