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Tzomet (lit Crossroads) is a small secular, right-wing political party
List of political parties in Israel

Israel's political system is based on proportional representation which allows for a multi-party system with numerous parties. Although there are three major parties, a single party usually has no chance of gaining power by itself, forcing the parties to cooperate and form coalition governments....
 in Israel
Israel

Israel officially the State of Israel , is a country in the Middle East 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 relatively small area....
.

party was the one who first brought the "peace for peace" slogan, which today is used by all Israel
Israel

Israel officially the State of Israel , is a country in the Middle East 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 relatively small area....
i right wing parties and movements. "Peace for peace" means that Israel
Israel

Israel officially the State of Israel , is a country in the Middle East 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 relatively small area....
 should not give up territories to get real peace (see land for peace
Land for peace

land for peace is a general proposal for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict by which the State of Israel would relinquish control of all or part of the occupied territories it conquered in 1967 and expel the area's Jewish inhabitants in return for peace and security with full recognition by the Arab world....
), and if Arabs really want peace they should stop the policy of demanding lands using threats but give up on their demands.

The party supports a separation of religion and state.

party was founded by General Rafael Eitan
Rafael Eitan

Rafael "Raful" Eitan was an Israeli general, former Ramatkal of the Israel Defense Forces and later a politician, a Knesset member Cabinet of Israel....
 in 1983 after his retirement from the position of chief-of-staff in 1982.






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Tzomet (lit Crossroads) is a small secular, right-wing political party
List of political parties in Israel

Israel's political system is based on proportional representation which allows for a multi-party system with numerous parties. Although there are three major parties, a single party usually has no chance of gaining power by itself, forcing the parties to cooperate and form coalition governments....
 in Israel
Israel

Israel officially the State of Israel , is a country in the Middle East 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 relatively small area....
.

Ideology

The party was the one who first brought the "peace for peace" slogan, which today is used by all Israel
Israel

Israel officially the State of Israel , is a country in the Middle East 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 relatively small area....
i right wing parties and movements. "Peace for peace" means that Israel
Israel

Israel officially the State of Israel , is a country in the Middle East 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 relatively small area....
 should not give up territories to get real peace (see land for peace
Land for peace

land for peace is a general proposal for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict by which the State of Israel would relinquish control of all or part of the occupied territories it conquered in 1967 and expel the area's Jewish inhabitants in return for peace and security with full recognition by the Arab world....
), and if Arabs really want peace they should stop the policy of demanding lands using threats but give up on their demands.

The party supports a separation of religion and state.

History

The party was founded by General Rafael Eitan
Rafael Eitan

Rafael "Raful" Eitan was an Israeli general, former Ramatkal of the Israel Defense Forces and later a politician, a Knesset member Cabinet of Israel....
 in 1983 after his retirement from the position of chief-of-staff in 1982. He headed it throughout its existence and modeled it in his spirit as a secular, right-wing party with a strong agricultural side. Many of Tzomet's members and MKs were neighbors of Eitan in Tel Adashim (a small agricultural community). Tzomet ran for the 1984 elections
Israeli legislative election, 1984

Elections in Israel for the eleventh Knesset were held in Israel on 23 July, 1984. Voter turnout was 78.1%....
 in a joint list with the Tehiya
Tehiya

Tehiya , originally known as Banai , then Tehiya-Bnai , was a small Right wing politics political party in Israel that existed from 1979 until 1992....
 party and Eitan was its only member of the Knesset
Knesset

The Knesset is the legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem....
. Tzomet and the Tehiya parted way in 1987 and Tzomet ran independently in the 1988 elections
Israeli legislative election, 1988

Elections in Israel for the twelfth Knesset were held in Israel on 1 November, 1988. Voter turnout was 78.9%....
, winning two seats. The party joined Yitzhak Shamir
Yitzhak Shamir

was Prime Minister of Israel of Israel from 1983 to 1984 and again from 1986 to 1992....
's government in 1990 and Eitan was appointed Minister of Agriculture
Agriculture Minister of Israel

The Agriculture Minister of Israel is the political head of the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture and a relatively minor position in the Cabinet of Israel....
. However, the party left the coalition in December 1991 in protest at Shamir's participation in the Madrid Conference
Madrid Conference of 1991

The Madrid Conference was hosted by the government of Spain and co-sponsored by the USA and the USSR. It convened on October 30 1991 and lasted for three days....
.

In the 1992 elections
Israeli legislative election, 1992

Elections for the thirteenth Knesset were held in Israel on 23 June, 1992. The result was a victory for the left, led by Yitzhak Rabin's Labor Party , though their win was at least partially due to several small right-wing parties narrowly failing to cross the Election threshold and thus effectively wasting votes for the right....
 Tzomet gained eight seats, but were not included in the left-wing coalition. However, the party's success was also its downfall. None of the new MKs had any political experience and most were completely anonymous. A popular joke at the time described the party as "Raful and the seven dwarfs". Allegations of tyrannical behavior by Raful were raised, and three members - Gonen Segev
Gonen Segev

Gonen Segev in Kiryat Motzkin is a former Israeli member of Knesset and Cabinet of Israel and pediatrician who was convicted for drug dealer and forgery....
, Esther Salmovitz and Alex Goldfarb - left and founded the Yiud
Yiud

Yiud was a small, short-lived List of political parties in Israel in Israel in the mid-1990s....
 party (which then also splintered into Atid
Atid (political party)

Atid was a short-lived List of political parties in Israel in the mid-1990s. It is not related to the modern Atid Ehad party....
. The three left the party because Segev was offered the position of Minister of Energy by Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin

was an Israeli politician and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–1977 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995....
 if he voted in favour of the Oslo Accords
Oslo Accords

The Oslo Accords, officially called the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements or Declaration of Principles was a milestone in the Palestinian - Israeli conflict....
, which Tzomet opposed, and which would not have passed without his vote.

All this reduced the popularity of the party and in the 1996 elections
Israeli legislative election, 1996

Elections for the fourteenth Knesset were held in Israel alongside the first ever Israeli prime ministerial election, 1996 on 29 May, 1996. Voter turnout was 79.3%....
 it chose to run in a joint list with the Likud
Likud

Likud is the major center-right List of political parties in Israel in Israel. It was founded in 1973 by Menachem Begin, largely as the "direct ideological descendant" of the Herut, in an alliance with several other right-wing and liberal parties....
 and Gesher under the name "National Camp List". Tzomet was ensured several relatively high places in the combined list, partly as a reward for the withdrawal of Eitan as prime minister candidate - the 1996 elections were the first Israeli elections to feature a double vote, one for the Knesset and one direct vote for the prime minister
Israeli prime ministerial election, 1996

The first ever election for Prime Minister was held in Israel on 29 May 1996 alongside simultaneous Israeli legislative election, 1996. There were only two candidates, Shimon Peres of the Labor and Binyamin Netanyahu of Likud....
. Eventually, three Tzomet candidates were voted into the Knesset
Knesset

The Knesset is the legislature of Israel, located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem....
, though one of them, Moshe Peled, broke away to form his own Mekhora
Mekhora (political party)

Mekhora was a short-lived one-man political faction in Israel in the late 1990s....
 faction before joining Moledet
Moledet

Moledet is a small right-wing political party in Israel. It advocates the notion of voluntary population transfer of the Arab population of the West Bank....
.

In the 1999 elections Tzomet ran alone for the Knesset. However, it had lost almost all its support, and won just 4,128 votes, less than 10% of the number needed to cross the 1.5% electoral threshold
Election threshold

In party-list proportional representation systems, an election threshold is a clause that stipulates that a party must receive a minimum percentage of votes, either nationally or within a particular district, to get any seats in the parliament....
. After the humiliating defeat, Eitan retired from the political life.

The party continues to exist and has run in both the 2003 and 2006 elections but won only 2,023 and 1,342 votes respectively. In the 2009 elections
Israeli legislative election, 2009

Elections for the 18th Knesset were held in Israel on 10 February 2009. These elections became necessary due to the resignation of Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert as leader of the Kadima party, and the failure of his successor, Tzipi Livni, to form a coalition government....
 they again failed.

Knesset members

Knesset
(MKs)		Knesset Members
11th
Israeli legislative election, 1984

Elections in Israel for the eleventh Knesset were held in Israel on 23 July, 1984. Voter turnout was 78.1%....

(1)		Rafael Eitan
Rafael Eitan

Rafael "Raful" Eitan was an Israeli general, former Ramatkal of the Israel Defense Forces and later a politician, a Knesset member Cabinet of Israel....
12th
Israeli legislative election, 1988

Elections in Israel for the twelfth Knesset were held in Israel on 1 November, 1988. Voter turnout was 78.9%....

(2)		Rafael Eitan, Yoash Tzidon
13th
Israeli legislative election, 1992

Elections for the thirteenth Knesset were held in Israel on 23 June, 1992. The result was a victory for the left, led by Yitzhak Rabin's Labor Party , though their win was at least partially due to several small right-wing parties narrowly failing to cross the Election threshold and thus effectively wasting votes for the right....

(8 –3)		Pini Badash, Haim Dayan, Rafael Eitan, Moshe Peled
Moshe Peled (politician)

Moshe Peled is a former Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset for Tzomet, Mekhora and Moledet between 1992 and 1999....
, Eliezer Sandberg
Eliezer Sandberg

Eliezer Sandberg is a former Israeli politician who served as a government minister between 2003 and 2004....

– Alex Goldfarb, Esther Salmovitz, Gonen Segev
Gonen Segev

Gonen Segev in Kiryat Motzkin is a former Israeli member of Knesset and Cabinet of Israel and pediatrician who was convicted for drug dealer and forgery....
 (to Yiud
Yiud

Yiud was a small, short-lived List of political parties in Israel in Israel in the mid-1990s....
)
14th
Israeli legislative election, 1996

Elections for the fourteenth Knesset were held in Israel alongside the first ever Israeli prime ministerial election, 1996 on 29 May, 1996. Voter turnout was 79.3%....

(3 –1)		Haim Dayan, Rafael Eitan
– Moshe Peled (to Mekhora
Mekhora (political party)

Mekhora was a short-lived one-man political faction in Israel in the late 1990s....
)


See also

  • Neo-Zionism
    Neo-Zionism

    Neo-Zionism is a movement that appeared in Israel after the Six Days War and that evolved in parallel with Post-Zionism. Both developed during the "fundamental shaking of the dominant national ethos, Zionism, that generate[d] the New Historians and debate in Israel"....


External links

  • Knesset website
  • Jewish Agency