The
Centre Party , originally known as
Israel in the Centre, was a short-lived political party in
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
. Formed in 1999 by former
Defense MinisterThe Defense Minister of Israel is head of the Ministry of Defense in Israel. The post is considered to be the second most important position in the Israeli cabinet, and usually has a Deputy Minister. The Defense Minister is also a permanent member of the Security Cabinet...
Yitzhak MordechaiYitzhak Mordechai was an Israeli general, and later Minister of Defense and Minister of Transport. He retired from political life in 2000 after being indicted for sexual assaults during his military service and later persiods...
, the aim was to create a group of moderates to challenge both Binyamin Netanyahu on the right and opposition leader
Ehud BarakEhud Barak is an Israeli politician, former Prime Minister, and current Minister of Defense, deputy prime minister and leader of Israel's Labor Party....
's Labour Party on the left.
The party was established on 23 February 1999, towards the end of the
14th Knesset'sElections for the fourteenth Knesset were held in Israel alongside the first ever election for Prime Minister on 29 May, 1996. Voter turnout was 79.3%.- Results :1 One Nation broke away from Labour....
term, by Mordechai,
David MagenDavid Magen is a former Israeli politician who served as a Minister without Portfolio and Minister of Economics and Planning in the 1990s.-Biography:...
and
Dan MeridorDan Meridor is an Israeli politician and minister. A longtime member of the Likud party, in the late 1990s he became one of the founders of the Centre Party. He rejoined Likud in the early 2000s, and returned to the Knesset following the 2009 elections...
from
LikudLikud is the major center-right political party in Israel. It was founded in 1973 by Menachem Begin in an alliance with several right-wing and liberal parties. Likud's victory in the 1977 elections was a major turning point in the country's political history, marking the first time the left had...
, Hagai Merom and
Nissim ZviliNissim Zvili is a former Israeli politician.-Biography:Born in Tunisia, Zvili made aliyah at a young age. He graduated from an agricultural high school and later served with the IDF...
of Labour, and
Eliezer SandbergEliezer Sandberg is a former Israeli politician who served as a government minister between 2003 and 2004.-Biography:...
of
TzometTzomet is a small secular, right-wing political party in Israel.-Ideology:The party was the one who first brought the "peace for peace" slogan, which today is used by all Israeli right wing parties and movements...
.
The
Centre Party , originally known as
Israel in the Centre, was a short-lived political party in
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
. Formed in 1999 by former
Defense MinisterThe Defense Minister of Israel is head of the Ministry of Defense in Israel. The post is considered to be the second most important position in the Israeli cabinet, and usually has a Deputy Minister. The Defense Minister is also a permanent member of the Security Cabinet...
Yitzhak MordechaiYitzhak Mordechai was an Israeli general, and later Minister of Defense and Minister of Transport. He retired from political life in 2000 after being indicted for sexual assaults during his military service and later persiods...
, the aim was to create a group of moderates to challenge both Binyamin Netanyahu on the right and opposition leader
Ehud BarakEhud Barak is an Israeli politician, former Prime Minister, and current Minister of Defense, deputy prime minister and leader of Israel's Labor Party....
's Labour Party on the left.
History
The party was established on 23 February 1999, towards the end of the
14th Knesset'sElections for the fourteenth Knesset were held in Israel alongside the first ever election for Prime Minister on 29 May, 1996. Voter turnout was 79.3%.- Results :1 One Nation broke away from Labour....
term, by Mordechai,
David MagenDavid Magen is a former Israeli politician who served as a Minister without Portfolio and Minister of Economics and Planning in the 1990s.-Biography:...
and
Dan MeridorDan Meridor is an Israeli politician and minister. A longtime member of the Likud party, in the late 1990s he became one of the founders of the Centre Party. He rejoined Likud in the early 2000s, and returned to the Knesset following the 2009 elections...
from
LikudLikud is the major center-right political party in Israel. It was founded in 1973 by Menachem Begin in an alliance with several right-wing and liberal parties. Likud's victory in the 1977 elections was a major turning point in the country's political history, marking the first time the left had...
, Hagai Merom and
Nissim ZviliNissim Zvili is a former Israeli politician.-Biography:Born in Tunisia, Zvili made aliyah at a young age. He graduated from an agricultural high school and later served with the IDF...
of Labour, and
Eliezer SandbergEliezer Sandberg is a former Israeli politician who served as a government minister between 2003 and 2004.-Biography:...
of
TzometTzomet is a small secular, right-wing political party in Israel.-Ideology:The party was the one who first brought the "peace for peace" slogan, which today is used by all Israeli right wing parties and movements...
. However, the most significant ally Mordechai had made was General
Amnon Lipkin-ShahakAmnon Lipkin-Shahak is a former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Member of the Knesset andMinister of Transportation and Tourism.-Military service:...
, the just-retired army Chief-of-Staff who had been his most bitter rival for that post in 1994.
It borrowed many of its themes from
The Third WayThe Third Way was a political party in Israel in the 1990s.-Background:The party was formed on 7 March 1996 towards the end of the 13th Knesset's term when two MKs, Avigdor Kahalani and Emanuel Zisman, broke away from the Labour Party...
, a group that split with the Labour Party in 1994 over rumours of negotiatons to return the
Golan HeightsThe Golan Heights is a strategic plateau and mountainous region at the southern end of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains and remains a highly contested land straddling the borders of Syria and Israel. Two-thirds of the area is currently governed by Israel...
. However, by 1999 The Third Way was a partner of the Likud government and had lost much of its public credit due to its small influence on Netanyahu. Mordechai, who was less hawkish than Netanyahu, wanted further progress in the
Oslo AccordsThe Oslo Accords, officially called the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements or Declaration of Principles became a milestone toward the resolution of the Palestinian - Israeli conflict, one of the major continuing issues within the wider Arab-Israeli conflict...
, and clashed with the prime minister and other members of his cabinet. Though few of the new party's positions were original, it was considered impossible for Mordechai to break with the Likud in any other way, as joining the Labour Party would mean taking the passenger seat to Ehud Barak, who was far more hated by Mordechai than Netanyahu.
The joining of Dan Meridor was one of the best events of the early days of the party. One of the Likud's younger and more professional members, Meridor had a solid record as minister of justice from 1988 until 1992, was the son of
IrgunIrgun was a militant Zionist group that operated in the British mandate of Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the earlier and larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah...
resistance member and later Knesset member Eliyahu Meridor, and was a civilian counterballance to Mordechai.
1999 elections
Prior to the 1999 elections the party changed its name to the
Centre Party. Mordechai was also a candidate in the
direct election for prime ministerThe second Prime Ministerial election in Israel was held on 17 May, 1999 alongside elections for the 15th Knesset.-Context:This was only the second election for Prime Minister in Israel, the 1996 vote having been an extremely tight contest between Binyamin Netanyahu and Shimon Peres.The vote was...
but dropped out before the ballot when it became clear that Ehud Barak was rapidly rising in the polls. In elections to the Knesset itself the Centre Party took roughly 5% of the vote, enough for 6 seats.
Joining the government
The party joined Ehud Barak's
One IsraelOne Israel was an alliance of the Israeli Labour Party, Meimad and Gesher created to run for the 1999 Knesset elections.-Background:...
coalition alongside
ShasShas is a political party in Israel, primarily representing Haredi Sephardi and Mizrahi Judaism. Following the 2009 elections in which Shas won 11 seats, it joined Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government and holds four cabinet posts...
,
MeretzThe New Movement-Meretz , previously known as Meretz, then Yachad, and then Meretz-Yachad is a left-wing, Zionist, social democratic political party in Israel, which emphasizes the strive for peace, human rights, religious freedom and green politics.-History:Meretz was formed in 1992 prior to the...
, the
National Religious PartyThe National Religious Party was a political party in Israel representing the religious Zionist movement...
and Yisrael BaAliyah. Mordechai became
Minister of TransportThe Transportation Minister of Israel is the government minister at the head of the Transportation Ministry in Israel. A relatively minor post in the Israeli cabinet, it is often given to smaller parties in the governing coalitions...
and Deputy Prime Minister, whilst Lipkin-Shahak became
Minister of TourismThe Tourism Minister of Israel is the political head of the Israeli Ministry of Tourism and a relatively minor position in the Israeli cabinet...
. Following Shas leaving the coaltion in August 2000, former mayor of
Tel AvivTel Aviv-Yafo , usually called Tel Aviv, is the second largest city in Israel, with an estimated population of 391,300. The city is situated on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline, with a land area of...
,
Roni MiloRoni Milo is an Israeli politician, lawyer and journalist, and a former Knesset member who held several ministerial positions. He was also mayor of Tel Aviv from 1993 to 1998.-Political career:...
, was made
Minister of HealthThe Health Minister of Israel is the political head of the Israeli Ministry of Health and a member of the cabinet. The current Minister of Health is Binyamin Netanyahu of Likud....
. However, Mordechai was brought down by a sex scandal from his years in the army, and resigned from the Knesset on 30 May, 2000; Lipkin-Shahak replaced him as
Minister of TransportThe Transportation Minister of Israel is the government minister at the head of the Transportation Ministry in Israel. A relatively minor post in the Israeli cabinet, it is often given to smaller parties in the governing coalitions...
. Following Mordechai's resignation, the party began to disintegrate.
Unravelling
The perceived blandness of the Centre Party during the frenzied opposition campaign against Barak made it a dead duck in the Knesset, and soon its legislators began to desert, although Shahak would not resign from the cabinet, and the Centre Party was the only group that stayed the duration of the Barak government. Milo and former Likud member Yehiel Lasry defected back to Likud, and Rabin-Pelossof, Lipkin, and Uri Savir formed the
New WayThe New Way was a short-lived political faction in Israel in the early twenty-first century.-Background:The faction was formed on 6 March 2001 when three MKs, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, Dalia Rabin-Pelossof and Uri Savir, broke away from the Centre Party.Two days after the party's formation...
after Barak lost elections for prime minister to
Ariel Sharon' is an Israeli general and statesman, former Israeli Prime Minister...
in 2001. By the end of the Knesset term only Meridor and
Nehama RonenNehama Ronen is a former Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset for the Centre Party between 2001 and 2003.-Biography:Ronen studied education and history at Tel Aviv University, gaining a B.Ed...
remained in the faction and the party did not run in the 2003 elections.
Significance
When Mordechai campaigned in 1999 for prime minister, it was rightly believed that he would be the factor that would kill the chance of Netanyahu's reelection. It was not yet known whether the Center Party was simply a group of disgruntled Likud and Labour members, or were progressive ideologues of their parties. The worst problem they encountered was the ascendance of Shas, the Haredi pressure group that drew masses of Mizrahim that otherwise may have voted for Mordechai. Even at its height, the Center was only the fourth largest party in Barak's coalition, after Labour, Shas, and Meretz respectively. They also could not effectively counter Meretz's leftward slant that ultimately led to defection of more moderate allies in the coalition.
When the Sharon government came to power, Lipkin and his New Way broke with the Center and tried to be a part of the opposition, but had minimal effect against the broad coalition that included Likud, Labour, Shas, and numerous other parties across the spectrum. Both Meridor and Lipkin became disillusioned with politics by the time of the 2003 elections, and neither ran. Lipkin later joined the Labour Party in an internal role.
External links