Parties forming a “relative governing majority”
Likud (32 seats): a coalition of forces born of a merger between Herut — the political expression of Menachem Begin’s neo-Irgun and of Jabotinsky’s Revisionist movement — and the Liberal Party. Former prime ministers: Begin, Shamir.
Avoda (44 seats): the Labor Party. Rabin, Prime Minister. A party whose core descends from Ben Gurion’s Mapai and which was a member of the Second International.
Left-wing parties
Meretz (12 seats): a left-wing coalition of 3 parties represented in the government:
- Mapam, whose main base is the Kibbutz Artzi;
- the Civil Rights Movement, of Shulamit Aloni (secular and feminist, Minister of National Education);
- Shinui, which campaigns for the adoption of a majoritarian electoral system, and for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
Far-right parties
Tzomet (8 seats): “the crossroads,” led by the former Chief of the General Staff of Tsahal [the Israel Defense Forces], Raphael Eitan. A secular party, in favor of the annexation and settlement of the Occupied Territories.
Moledet (3 seats): the party of “the motherland”; in favor of the “transfer” of the Palestinians out of the Occupied Territories.
Tehiya (no seats): “the rebirth,” founded by the physicist Yuval Ne’eman and the “passionaria” Geula Cohen. In favor of annexing the Occupied Territories. No analogy with the Turkish party of the same name.
Religious parties
Shas (6 seats): represented in the government by Rabbi Deri, Minister of the Interior. A Sephardi Orthodox party opposed to the Degel HaTorah (“flag of the Torah”) of the Ashkenazi Rabbi Shach.
United Torah Party (4 seats: opposition): a coalition comprising Degel HaTorah, Agudat Israel (steered by the Lubavitcher Rebbe of New York, Menachem Mendel Schneerson), and Rabbi Peretz’s Moria party.
National Religious Party (opposition): an old “moderate” religious-Zionist party that has become ultra-annexationist since the Six-Day War. Plays an important role within the settler movement “Gush Emunim” (“bloc of the faithful”).
Arab parties
Hadash: “the renewal” (communist, 3 seats). Essentially established in the Arab sector: the result of a 1965 split from an old Judeo-Arab communist party, Maki.
Arab Democratic Party: recently founded by the former Arab Labor MK, Abd el-Wahab Darawshe.