Zvi Hendel

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Zvi Hendel

Date of birth	16 October 1949
Year of Aliyah	1959
Knesset(s)	14th, 15th, 16th, 17th (current)
Party	Tkuma (part of the National Union)
Former parties	National Religious Party

Zvi Hendel (Hebrew: צבי הנדל‎, born October 16, 1949 in Transylvania, Romania) is an Israeli politician. He was elected to the 17th Knesset on National Union's list.

He made Aliyah in 1959 and in his military service he served as a Gadna instructor. In his reserve duty he served as part of a reconnaissance unit in the Israeli Artillery Corps and took part in the Yom Kippur War.

In 1977 he moved with his family to the moshav of Ganei Tal, part in Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip. In 2005, they were evicted from their home as a result of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan.

[edit] Political career

In the early 1990s, Hendel was elected to the head of the Hof Aza Regional Council, and was first elected to the 14th Knesset in 1996 as a National Religious Party representative. Towards the end of his term, he left the party along with Hanan Porat and formed the "Emunim" faction, which soon after changed its name to Tkuma. As part the Tkuma party, he joined the National Union list, and on it was elected to the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth Knessets.

In the 15th Knesset, he served as chairman of the Aliyah, Absorption, and Diaspora committee.

During Ariel Sharon's second term as Prime Minister of Israel, Hendel served as Deputy Minister of Education, Culture, and Sports until the National Union party was dismissed from the coalition on June 6, 2004 prior to a vote about the unilateral disengagement plan.

A significant part of his parliamentary career was devoted to efforts for the residents of Gush Katif (where he himself resided), and strengthening the right wing in the Knesset. In this context, he also coined the phrase "כעומק החקירה, כך עומק העקירה" ("As deep the investigation is, so is the uprooting"), commenting on the legal investigations ongoing against Sharon at the same time Sharon changed his political views and decided on the Disengagement Plan.

Hendel also served as head of the Agricultural caucus in the Knesset.

In 2005, Hendel was evicted from his home along with fellow residents of Ganei Tal as part of the Disengagement Plan. Him and his family's dealing with the eviction was the subject of the documentaries "Katif", and "Last Katif".

In 2006, Hendel submitted a bill proposal that would tie an oath of loyalty to "a Jewish and democratic Israel" and to the laws of Israel, to the right to vote. The Bill was turned down by a vote of 45-17. ^[1]