Gahal

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 from its founding in 1965 until it merged into Likud in 1973.

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 (though Mapai 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 Labour 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 were later joined by another.

During the Six-Day War, Alignment leader and Prime Minister Levi Eshkol invited the party 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 after Eshkol's death in 1969.

In the 1969 elections, the party maintained its 26-seat strength, though was comprehensively beaten by the Alignment, who won 56, the best-ever election performance in Israeli political history. Nevertheless, it was invited back into a national unity government. However, Gahal pulled out of the coalition in 1970 after the government announced its support for the Rogers Plan. Although the government later retracted its support, 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 was called Likud, the Hebrew word for Consolidation.

Though it failed to overcome the Alignment in the 1973 elections, Likud comfortably won the 1977 elections, ousting the left from power for the first time in Israel's history.

Knesset members

Knesset (MKs)	Knesset Members
5th (27)	Zalman Abramov, Arie Altman, Binyamin Arditi, Binyamin Avniel, Yohanan Bader, Menachem Begin, Aryeh Ben-Eliezer, Peretz Bernstein, Haim Cohen-Meguri, Aharon Goldstein, Yitzhak Klinghoffer, Joseph Kremerman, Haim Landau, Nahum Levin, Eliyahu Meridor, Yaakov Meridor, Shlomo Perlstein, Esther Raziel-Naor, Elimelech Rimalt, Yosef Sapir, Yosef Serlin, Shabtai Shichman, 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, Joseph Kremerman, Haim Landau, Eliyahu Meridor*, Yaakov Meridor, Shlomo Perlstein, Esther Raziel-Naor, Elimelech 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-Tsiddon* (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 Corfo, Simha Erlich, Aharon Goldstein, Benjamin Halevi, Avraham Katz, Ben-Zion Keshet, Yitzhak Klinghoffer, Joseph Kremerman, Haim Landau, David Levy, Dov Milman, Yaakov Nechushtan, Moshe Nissim, Esther Raziel-Naor, Elimelech Rimalt, Yosef Sapir (replaced by Mates Drobles), Yosef Serlin, Avraham Shechterman, Yosef Tamir, Menachem Yedid, Zvi Zimmerman

External links

• Party history Knesset website