Ale Yarok

Cannabis legalization has been Ale Yarok’s central political cause since its establishment in 1999, while its electoral history has combined independent campaigns with later joint lists.[1][5] Its founding activists included Shlomi Sendak, Boaz Wachtel, and Rafik Kimchi; another account of its establishment also names Avi Bardugo among the founders.[1][3]

The party developed beyond its original single-issue identity, adopting positions on individual freedom, equal rights, environmental protection, and relations between religion and the state.[3][6] For the 2013 election, it used the name Ale Yarok–the Liberal List to emphasize this wider agenda, including lower taxes and environmental quality alongside cannabis legalization.[3] It had never entered the Knesset before the 2026 alliance.[7][5]

Ale Yarok first contested a Knesset election in 1999, receiving 34,029 votes, approximately 1% of the vote, without crossing the electoral threshold.[3] Its early electoral identity centered on cannabis legalization, and its first campaign did not secure parliamentary representation.[1]

Boaz Wachtel headed the party’s submitted candidate list for the 2003 election, which contained 18 candidates.[8] The party received 37,855 votes and again remained outside the Knesset; the election-results table recorded its share as 1.0% and the qualifying threshold as 1.5%.[9] Before the election, public-opinion polling had suggested that Green Leaf might obtain two seats in the 16th Knesset, but that forecast did not become an election result.[10][9]

Wachtel’s background included work as an assistant military attaché at Israel’s embassy in Washington during the 1980s and service on an Israeli team involved in former US president Ronald Reagan’s space-based anti-missile shield program.[10] Explaining his involvement in party politics, he said: “We’re not politicians by choice, but out of necessity,” adding that changing policy had required entering Israel’s political arena.[10]

After its unsuccessful 1999 and 2003 campaigns, Ale Yarok broadened its platform to cover political and economic questions and described itself during the 2006 campaign as ultraliberal.[11] In the 2006 election, it received 40,353 votes, or 1.3%, but the threshold had risen to 2%, leaving it without a seat for a third consecutive election.[12]

Before the 2009 election, Wachtel promoted comedian Gil Kopatch to lead the party, hoping that his public profile would help it cross the threshold after three unsuccessful campaigns.[12] Its vote instead fell to 13,132, or 0.39%.[13] Wachtel attributed the unfavorable climate for smaller parties partly to the war and to voters’ concern that Benjamin Netanyahu would take power; some voters also did not make cannabis policy a priority in that election.[13]

Under the name Green Leaf–Liberal List, the party received 43,734 valid votes, or 1.15%, in the January 2013 election and won no mandate.[2] The threshold at that election was 2%.[14] Its support was stronger within the absentee or “double-envelope” count: about 8,500 such ballots—most cast by IDF soldiers—went to the party.[14] A calculation based solely on those ballots suggested a hypothetical four to five seats, rather than an actual parliamentary allocation.[14] There were also complaints that Ale Yarok ballot slips had run out at some IDF polling stations.[14]

Oren Leibovitz was elected chairman ahead of the 2015 election.[15] During the campaign, the party offered donors savings bonds redeemable for marijuana if cannabis became legal in Israel.[15] An NIS 50 donation was associated with a bond for one gram, while an NIS 420 option included five grams, a T-shirt, and a lighter.[15] At the reported Wednesday-evening checkpoint, the campaign had raised NIS 115,285.[15]

The party again failed to cross the threshold in 2015, when the qualifying share was 3.25%.[16] Its overall support was approximately 47,000 votes, described in a later retrospective as its electoral record.[5] A contemporaneous account separately reported fewer than 40,000 votes from the general population and 8,472 double-envelope votes, the latter representing 3.64% of that ballot count.[16]

In 2019, Ale Yarok announced that it would not contest the election, marking the first time in its 20-year history that it had not run.[7] The party said abstention would encourage larger parties to seek its supporters and adopt cannabis legalization, estimating that its decision could shift 50,000 potential voters.[7] Chairman Oren Leibovitz presented the move as a way to advance the cause through other parties rather than another independent campaign.[7]

Before the 2022 election, the party was renamed Ale Yarok 2.0 and joined a slate called “Daat Tov VaRa and Brit Shevet Avraham–Ale Yarok and Usrat al-Islamiyya.”[5] Its ballot letter changed from the familiar “קנ” to “ת.”[5] With 84% of votes counted, the slate had 1,322 votes; this was an interim count, not a final election total.[5]

Ahead of the 2026 election, Ale Yarok, then chaired by Nir Yofteru, joined Sharan Haskel’s Israel Techila for a joint electoral run.[4] Israel Techila was a new right-wing party founded by the former Likud Knesset member, with a platform that was hawkish on security, opposed territorial concessions, supported canceling the Oslo Accords, and favored right-wing economic policies.[17] After more than 77% of votes had been counted, the joint slate had 740 votes and was reported as falling short of entering the Knesset; that figure was not a final tally.[18]

Ale Yarok’s 2006 platform linked cannabis legalization with equal human rights, individual freedoms, same-sex marriage, environmental protection, organic agriculture, support for artists, and animal rights.[6] Its political proposals included a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, with a separate election profile specifying minimal land swaps.[6][11] The broader social and economic agenda included affirmative action for women and Arabs, tax reform, reducing social gaps, and assistance for victims of violence and drugs and their families.[11]

An earlier platform called for legalizing both marijuana and prostitution.[10] Wachtel argued that marijuana was not a gateway to harder drugs and attributed addiction to wider social problems, including poverty, violence, and sexual abuse.[10] He maintained that legalizing cannabis could free government resources for addressing addiction and violent crime; these were his policy arguments rather than findings established by the party’s electoral record.[10]

Military-service reform also appeared in the party’s platform during the 2013 campaign.[14] Its proposals included shortening IDF service, releasing soldiers considered redundant, and paying those who served fairly.[14] The party’s stronger showing among double-envelope ballots in that election accompanied reporting on these service-related policies.[14]

Medical cannabis became another area of activity for the leadership.[19] A 2019 report identified chairman Oren Leibovitz as involved in debates over medical-cannabis exports and regulation of the sector.[19] In explaining the party’s decision not to run that year, he said its activists had helped move cannabis from a subject treated as a joke to one associated with patients’ access to treatment.[7]

The 2026 partnership with Israel Techila presented its shared agenda as combining that party’s security and economic outlook with Ale Yarok’s emphasis on individual liberty, legalization, and medical-cannabis patients’ rights.[4] The announced priorities included cannabis legalization, major reform of the medical-cannabis system, reducing bureaucratic barriers for patients, and research and innovative treatments for post-traumatic stress and mental health.[4]

Across its first six election campaigns, Ale Yarok received at least 34,000 votes in five, with the approximately 13,000-vote result in 2009 standing apart from that pattern.[5] Nevertheless, its recurring support did not produce Knesset representation, including in 2013 when nearly 44,000 votes fell below the 2% threshold.[2][14]

Its 2013 result also illustrated the possible parliamentary consequences of votes cast for lists that did not qualify for seats.[20] Meretz received just over 172,000 votes and won six seats that year; a hypothetical addition of approximately 44,000 votes was estimated to be sufficient for at least one more seat.[20] The associated scenario proposed that a more permissive drug-law position might have attracted Ale Yarok voters to Meretz, rather than establishing that such a transfer would actually have occurred.[20]

The party’s own strategy in 2019 explicitly sought influence without running a list: it hoped that larger parties would compete for cannabis-reform voters and adopt legalization.[7] Its later participation in joint slates, including the 2026 alliance, provided a different electoral framework for advancing legalization and patients’ rights.[5][4]

The choice of Gil Kopatch as leader before the 2009 election produced disagreement over campaign style.[12] Wachtel defended the comic approach, while other legalization advocates criticized it for making the cause appear unserious.[12]

A more substantial dispute concerned control and legal representation of the party around the 2022 campaign.[21] A court-mediated agreement gave attorney Dekel David Ozer, also known as Hetz-David, the campaign’s leading role, with the party to return to Wachtel if it failed to enter the Knesset.[21] In June 2023, the Registrar of Parties ruled that Ozer was acting unlawfully as its representative and that Wachtel would again represent it.[21] Ozer and a response issued in the party’s name challenged Wachtel’s authority, asserting that he had been expelled in 2022.[21]