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 alliance in Israel led by Menachem Begin from its founding in 1965 until the establishment of Likud in 1973.

History

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. The Gahal platform largely incorporated Herut's approach to security and foreign affairs and the Liberal Party's approach to economics and finance.^[1]

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 that had dominated Israeli politics since independence, although Mapai also 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 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 a fourth later left.

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

In the October 1969 elections, Gahal maintained its 26-seat strength, but was comprehensively beaten by the Alignment, which won 56, in the best-ever election performance in Israeli political history. Nevertheless, it remained within the national unity government. The announcement of the Rogers Plan on 9 December had alarmed Menachem Begin sufficiently to cause the Herut faction to stop haggling with the Labor Party and accept the six cabinet seats offered in the new government. At the UN, a similar American proposal to Jordan on 18 December, explicitly calling for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, removed any remaining differences with the prime minister, since they both saw this as a challenge requiring a blunt and energetic response.^[2] Gahal pulled out of the coalition in August 1970 however, after the government announced its support for the Rogers Plan. Although the government later retracted its support for the plan, Gahal did not rejoin the coalition.

Before the 1973 elections, Gahal and 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) to form a new alliance named Likud, the Hebrew word for consolidation. Although Likud failed to overcome the Alignment in the 1973 elections, it comfortably won the next election in 1977, ousting the left from power for the first time in Israel's history.

Electoral results

Election year	# of overall votes	% of overall vote	# of overall seats won	+/–	Leader
1965	256,957 (#2)	21.3	26 / 120	New	Menachem Begin
1969	296,294 (#2)	21.7	26 / 120		Menachem Begin

References

External links

• Gahal Knesset website