Parliamentary election in Israel 2006

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← 2003General election 20062009 →
(in %)
 %
30th
20th
10
0
22.02
15.06
9.53
8.99
8.99
7.14
5.92
4.69
11.83
Gains and losses
compared to 2003
 % p
 25th
 20th
 15th
 10
   5
   0
  -5
-10
-15
-20
-25
+22.02
+0.60
+1.31
-20.30
+6.84
-2.59
+5.92
+0.40
-14.20
Template: election chart / maintenance / notes
Remarks:
e Comparative value for 2003: Yisra'el ba-Alija
i of which Meretz 3.77%, United Arab List 3.02%, Hadash 2.74%, Balad 2.30%
Distribution of seats in the 17th Knesset
3
3
4th
5
19th
29
7th
11
12
9
12
6th
3 3 4th 5 19th 29 7th 11 12 9 12 6th 
A total of 120 seats

On March 28, 2006, elections for the 17th Knesset took place in Israel . The vote resulted in a large number of seats for the then new Kadima party, followed by the Labor (Avoda) party, and a big loss for the Likud party. After the election, the government was formed by the Kadima , Avoda , Shas and Gil parties , with Yisrael Beitenu later joining the government. The prime minister was Ehud Olmert , the chairman of Kadima, who had been the incumbent prime minister in the election.

Starting position

Election 2003 and later developments

In the 2003 elections, the Likud, led by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, won a convincing victory by Israeli standards and won 38 seats in the 120-member Knesset (parliament), not least because Sharon was perceived as a determined fighter against terrorism has been. The Labor Party, led by Amram Mitzna, with the slogan “Withdrawal from Gaza”, won only 19 seats and did not initially join the new government. After the 2003 elections, the Likud suffered severe divisions over several positions taken by Sharon, most notably over its adoption of a plan to withdraw Israeli settlers and troops from Gaza. The plan had created serious tension within the Likud party, and in January 2005 Shimon Peres formed a coalition with the Labor Party with Sharon to facilitate the withdrawal from Gaza despite opposition from a majority of Likud members.

Overthrow of the Likud-led government

In the fall of 2005, the Peres Labor Party provided the necessary votes for the 30th government, led by Likud, to maintain its majority support in the Knesset. In the election of Awoda's internal leadership, planned for early November, Amir Peretz fought for the party leadership with a platform that included Awoda's withdrawal from the coalition led by Sharon. Peretz narrowly defeated Peres in the leadership election on November 9, 2005; two days later, all Labor Party ministers resigned from the cabinet and the Labor Party withdrew its support for the government so that it could not find a majority in the Knesset.

In the negotiations between Sharon and Peretz, the election date was set for March 28, 2006. "I'll let him [Sharon] choose a date in this period between late February and late March, and any date he chooses is acceptable to me, the earlier the better," Peretz said at the time. Sharon stated, "As soon as it became clear that the existing political framework was falling apart, I decided that it was best for the country to hold new elections as soon as possible."

Split of Likud and establishment of Kadima

The upcoming election opened the prospect of a leadership election in Likud, with former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expected to challenge Sharon for the party leadership. In late November, Sharon and a number of other Likud ministers and members of the Knesset announced that they were leaving the Likud to form a new, more centrist party, which would eventually be named Kadima. The establishment of Kadima turned the election into a three-way race between the new Avoda and Likud party, marking a departure from Israel's tradition of two-party-dominated elections. Although Kadima consisted mainly of former Likud members, Peres (after losing the election of the Avoda leadership to Peretz) also announced his support for the new party and later officially left the Labor Party. Peres cited Sharon's leadership qualities as the reason for his change of party. Polls carried out through late 2005 showed that Sharon's Kadima party had a dominant lead over Avoda and Likud.

Group leadership and list selection

It was widely expected that Sharon, as founder of Kadima and incumbent Prime Minister, would lead the new party in the March 2006 election. However, on January 4, 2006, he suffered a hemorrhagic stroke and fell into a coma. On January 31, 2006, Kadima submitted his list of candidates, with Sharon being excluded from the list due to his inability to sign the necessary documents to be a candidate. Ehud Olmert, who had become incumbent prime minister and incumbent chairman of Kadima after Sharon's stroke, has now officially become the new party's candidate for the office of prime minister. Peres was placed second on Avoda's candidate list. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was placed third on the Kadima list with the stipulation that she would be the senior vice-prime minister when Kadima formed the next government. In the Shinui primary, Tel Aviv Councilor Ron Levintal defeated Avraham Poraz for second place. Poraz, a close ally of party leader Yosef Lapid, resigned from Shinui, like most members of the Shinui Knesset faction, and formed a renegade party called Hetz (ha-Miflaga ha-Hilonit Tzionit; "the secular Zionist party") . Lapid resigned as party leader on January 25, 2006, and Leventhal was subsequently elected as the new party leader. Neither Shinui nor Hetz received enough votes to win a seat in the 17th Knesset. Shinui won 15 seats in the 2003 election and was the third largest party in the 16th Knesset. On January 30, 2006, the right-wing National Union (Halchud HaLeumi), a coalition of three small parties (Moledet, Tkuma, Tzionut Datit Leumit Mitchadeshet), presented a joint list with the National Religious Party. The merged list was headed by Benjamin Elon . The predominantly Russian immigrant party Yisrael Beitenu (Our Home Israel) had separated from the National Union and kept its own list. That split came after polls that predicted that if these two big right-wing blocs ran separately, they would get between 20 and 25 seats (they only got 7 in the previous election), and it turned out to be true : The National Union bloc received 9 seats and Yisrael Beitenu 11. The Likud elected Netanyahu as its chairman, against the then Defense Minister Silvan Shalom. At Netanyahu's insistence, Shalom and the other remaining Likud ministers resigned from the Olmert-led government in January 2006. Polls, conducted from January through March, showed that Kadima still had a significant lead, albeit slightly less than the polls conducted under Sharon's leadership.

Electoral system

In the elections to the Knesset, 120 seats are allocated according to the proportional representation of the parties using the D'Hondt procedure. The voting threshold for the 2006 election was set at 2% (versus 1.5% in previous elections), which is just over two seats. After the official results are published, the Israeli President delegates the task of forming a government to the member of the Knesset with the best chance of assembling a majority coalition (usually the leader of the largest party). This representative has up to 42 days to negotiate with the various parties and then submit his government to the Knesset for a vote of confidence. Once the government is approved (with a vote of at least 61 members), he / she becomes Prime Minister.

Government formation

For the second time in Israeli history (previously in 1999) there was no dominant party in the Knesset, only two medium-sized (Kadima and Avoda) and two small ones. After the election, Olmert stated that he preferred to form a coalition with the Labor Party and that Peretz was a "suitable partner"; be. On April 2, both Gil and Meretz Katzav recommended that Olmert become Prime Minister. The next day, in a joint appearance, Olmert and Peretz announced that Kadima and Awoda would be coalition partners and that Peretz would advise the president to select Olmert as prime minister. On April 6, President Katzav Olmert formally asked for the formation of a government that would officially make him Prime Minister-designate. A coalition government was formed, consisting of Kadima, Avoda, Shas and Gil. Olmert refused to comply with Peretz's demands on the Treasury Department, which instead was forced to accept the Defense Department. In October 2006, when the coalition was shaken after the 2006 Lebanon War, Olmert also brought the right-wing Yisrael Beitenu into the government. However, she left the coalition in January 2008 in protest of peace talks with the Palestinian Authority. According to the Congressional Research Service: The March 28, 2006 Knesset election results came as a surprise in many ways. The voter turnout was the lowest ever at 63.2%. The competition was widely viewed as a referendum on Kadima's plans to withdraw from the West Bank, but it also turned out to be a vote on economic policies that many believed had harmed the disadvantaged. Kadima took first place, but by a smaller margin than polls predicted. The Labor Party, which focused on socio-economic issues, came in a respectable second. Likud lost 75% of its 2003 votes because Kadima gained those followers. The decline is also due to Netanyahu, whose policies as finance minister have been blamed for social emergencies and whose opposition to unilateral withdrawals has been unpopular with a pragmatic, non-ideological electorate.