Haim Ramon

Ramon was born in Jaffa on April 10, 1950. He was the son of Holocaust survivors, and his family moved from a transit camp to Jaffa and then to Bat Yam.[1][4] He was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces in 1968 and served as an officer in the Israel Air Force, reaching the rank of captain. He earned a law degree from Tel Aviv University.[1][5]

Before entering parliament, Ramon was national coordinator of the Youth for Youth movement and chairman of the Public Council for Youth Exchanges.[1] He became involved in Labor politics in the early 1970s after reading a book by Arie (Lova) Eliav, whom he regarded as a mentor. Ramon later said he entered politics to help advance an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.[4]

Ramon became national secretary of the Labor Party’s Young Guard in 1978 and served through 1984. In 1985, he and Nissim Zvili established the Kefar ha-Yarok circle, a dovish group of younger Labor members that helped elect several of its members to the Twelfth Knesset.[6]

Ramon entered the Knesset in 1983, replacing Danny Rosolio, and was sworn in on May 17. He remained a member until 2009, completing 26 years of parliamentary service.[1][7] His committee assignments included Constitution, Law and Justice; State Audit; Finance; and House. From 1988 to 1992, he chaired the Labor parliamentary faction.[6]

In March 1990, Ramon worked with Labor leader Shimon Peres and consulted Shas leader Aryeh Deri on a plan to bring down Yitzhak Shamir’s National Unity Government through a no-confidence motion. Peres did not succeed in forming an alternative government.[6] In the February 1992 Labor leadership primaries, Ramon backed Yitzhak Rabin over Peres and became health minister in Rabin’s government that July.[6]

Ramon ran for Labor Party leader in 2002 against Amram Mitzna and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. A contemporary poll placed Ramon at 12 percent, compared with 43 percent for Mitzna and 26 percent for Ben-Eliezer; some of Ramon’s supporters shifted to Mitzna in an effort to prevent Ben-Eliezer’s reelection.[8] Ramon was described at the time as a centrist, long-time party activist with strong Histadrut ties. Mitzna won the November 19 leadership election.[9]

Contemporary analysis characterized Ramon as a stronger proponent of disengagement than Mitzna and reported that he regarded even offering negotiations with the Palestinians as a waste of time. It attributed his weak showing partly to Labor elders’ alienation over his manner of breaking the Histadrut’s power base and to comparisons with Mitzna’s personal qualities and management skills.[8] Ramon’s disputes with Labor’s older leadership were both institutional and generational, involving the federation’s position within the party and Labor’s broader direction.[10]

At the end of 2005, after Ariel Sharon left Likud and formed Kadima, Ramon left Labor and joined the new party. He had recently been described as Labor’s leading advocate of a fusion party and as likely to join Sharon’s political realignment.[11] Ramon later said he helped persuade Sharon and his advisers to establish Kadima as a vehicle for withdrawals from the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — that he considered important to Israel’s future. He was identified as left-wing on diplomatic questions and opposed to annexation.[12]

Ramon participated actively in negotiations to form a National Unity Government in 2004–05. After doing poorly in a Labor Central Committee vote for ministerial posts, he became a minister without portfolio in January 2005.[6] In May 2012, after Kadima chairman Shaul Mofaz joined the governing coalition, Ramon left the party, saying he no longer considered it centrist. That July, he announced plans for a new centrist party.[13]

Ramon’s most consequential early political break concerned reform of Israel’s health system and the Histadrut’s role in it. As health minister, he prepared a National Health Insurance bill that would separate the federation from Kupat Holim Clalit, its largest health fund. Opposition within Labor led him to resign as health minister in February 1994.[14] Ramon later recalled choosing health rather than finance when Rabin offered him a portfolio in 1992, saying that caring for his father, who died young, had convinced him that improving health care was the country’s most urgent need.[12]

The reform proposals addressed unclear health-care rights, uncertainty over the responsibilities of the government, health funds, and providers, and excessive centralization. They included a basic package of care for each citizen and changes to government provision and management, including restructuring the Ministry of Health. The Knesset enacted the bill on June 15, 1994.[15]

The law initiated by Ramon transferred responsibility for Clalit’s health services from the Histadrut to the government. Residents paid a health tax collected by the National Insurance Institute and could choose among four health funds. The law took effect in 1995 and severed Clalit’s organizational tie to the Histadrut.[2] Ramon argued that it established every citizen’s right to a defined benefits package. He said that before the reform about one million people lacked insurance or had only partial coverage, health funds provided unequal services, and some selected younger and healthier members.[16]

At a Labor Party conference on January 30, 1994, delegates called on Ramon to resign while the insurance proposal was being debated. He delivered the address later known as the “Whales Speech,” resigned, and established the New Life list to challenge Labor in the Histadrut election.[7] Ramon recalled that the federation opposed the bill because it would lose control, spent heavily against him, and hired an investigator to follow him. He also recalled being shouted and cursed at while trying to address a convention of about 3,000 people.[12]

The Histadrut faced serious economic and political problems before the election. Its financial institutions were struggling amid economic liberalization, pension funds were at risk, and 22,000 employees had been dismissed from the Histadrut-owned Koor conglomerate.[17] Ramon opposed Labor’s support for Haim Haberfeld and led the New Life list. On May 10, it won 47 percent of the vote, compared with 33 percent for Labor under Haberfeld. Ramon was elected secretary-general, took office on July 6, and changed the position’s title to chairman.[2]

The result broke Labor’s longstanding control of the federation. Mapam joined Ramon’s list despite an appeal from Prime Minister Rabin, and Ramon’s supporters presented the contest as a campaign against the old guard and the federation’s entrenched party ties.[10]

As chairman, Ramon dismissed approximately 45 percent of Histadrut and Workers Council staff, sold holdings and assets, and reduced the central committee from 40 members to 24. The 374 members and alternates of the Histadrut Committee were reduced to 137 in a body called the Elected Assembly. He strengthened the internal comptroller’s office and attempted to move the organization’s headquarters to Jerusalem, although it later returned to Tel Aviv.[2]

Assessments of his leadership differ. One account says he renamed the organization Histadrut Hadasha, or “New Histadrut,” but failed to create an effective trade union and presided over the breakdown of its economic structure. Those are the source’s evaluations of a contested period rather than neutral descriptions of the restructuring measures.[17] Ramon credited his confrontation with the federation with enabling passage of the National Health Insurance Law.[12]

After Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in November 1995, Shimon Peres asked Ramon to join his government. Ramon left the Histadrut and became interior minister, while his deputy Amir Peretz succeeded him as federation leader.[18] References date the transition to either November or December 1995.[1][6] Ramon said he had acted to honor Rabin’s memory and strengthen Peres’s government against the right, but later described leaving the Histadrut as a major mistake.[18]

The law’s later performance also became disputed. Ramon argued that it had been eroded since 1998 by the cancellation of the parallel tax and the exclusion of long-term care and psychiatric treatment, and he called for restoring its original framework. Health Minister Danny Naveh maintained that the law had not achieved equality in health services, while Ben-Gurion University professor Dov Chernichovsky described it as essential but identified exclusions and weaknesses in funding allocation.[16]

After serving as interior minister in Peres’s government, Ramon sat on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee from 1996 to 1999. In 1999 he became a minister in the Prime Minister’s Office under Ehud Barak, with responsibilities for Jerusalem, government reform, and liaison between the government and the Knesset. In August 2000, he also took on the interior portfolio.[1]

Ramon led a parliamentary effort that helped precipitate the early election ending Benjamin Netanyahu’s first government. Under Barak, he was among the leading figures advocating unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon. Later accounts also identify him as a leading force behind the separation barrier, the Gaza disengagement plan, and the “Big Bang” political plan associated with Kadima’s establishment.[18] These initiatives reflected his emphasis on territorial separation. He argued: “Our control over the territories is a cancer, and I will not let my enemy decide whether to undergo cancer removal surgery or not.”[19]

Ramon became a minister without portfolio in 2005 and joined Kadima after Sharon’s departure from Likud. Following the 2006 election, he became justice minister.[6] His earlier posts included minister in the Prime Minister’s Office in 1999, interior minister in 2000, and minister without portfolio in 2005.[20]

Ramon resigned as justice minister after his indictment in August 2006. On July 4, 2007, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appointed him vice premier, replacing Shimon Peres; Ramon and Finance Minister Roni Bar-On were described as close associates of Olmert.[21] Contemporary analysis characterized Ramon as an important figure in diplomacy and said that his appointment, alongside Ehud Barak’s return as defense minister, strengthened Olmert politically.[22] Ramon served as vice premier until March 2009.[1]

In September 2007, Ramon advanced a plan intended to preserve a democratic Israel with a solid Jewish majority. It included ceding Israeli control of Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem to the Palestinians, while each religion would administer its holy sites.[21] A detailed study described Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem remaining under Israeli sovereignty, Arab neighborhoods being recognized as Palestinian, and a special regime applying in the Holy Basin. Ramon also proposed transferring Walaja, Al-Sawahira, and Shuafat to Palestinian sovereignty after a Declaration of Principles was signed.[23]

The proposal represented Ramon’s position rather than established government policy. Several ministers and Kadima members opposed it, and the Prime Minister’s Office said it did not bind Olmert. Ramon’s letter to Jerusalem council member Nir Barkat specified that Jewish neighborhoods would remain under Israeli sovereignty and that the Western Wall and Jewish Quarter would remain under Israeli rule.[24]

Ramon also served on the Commission to Appoint Religious Court Judges. In early 2005, Ariel Sharon appointed him to the commission after Shinui left the coalition and Justice Minister Yosef (Tommy) Lapid resigned. An account reported that Ramon had agreed to support haredi candidates in exchange for support for his own candidate. Following pressure from women’s organizations and publicity about the report, he said he would not vote with the haredi members at the May 30 meeting, which ended without a vote.[25] The same account states that changes to the commission’s membership in July 2006 gave ultra-Orthodox members a majority.[25]

Ramon described his economic outlook in 2007 as “social-democratic capitalism,” combining free-market principles with social solidarity. He advocated economic growth and employment alongside restoring support mechanisms he said had been cut and had harmed people outside the labor market, particularly pensioners.[26] In a 2019 speech, he distinguished between a “Zionist Left” and a “non-Zionist Left,” warning that blurring the boundary between them could damage the center-left electorally.[27]

After leaving the Knesset in 2009, Ramon said he was taking an open-ended break from parliamentary life, although he agreed to chair the Kadima Council and remain politically active outside parliament. He identified his failure to challenge Ehud Barak after the 1996 election as a major political mistake and called Kadima one of the most important things he had done.[28]

Ramon’s public legacy is particularly associated with restructuring the Histadrut and advancing national health insurance. The health legislation shifted financing and administration away from the Histadrut’s direct control, established a basic benefits framework, and allowed residents to choose among four health funds.[2] His own account cast the Histadrut struggle as the political turning point that enabled the law’s passage, while later assessments of the system’s performance have differed.[12][16]

The 1994 Histadrut election demonstrated his ability to challenge entrenched party structures: his list won 47 percent against Labor’s 33 percent and ended Labor’s longstanding control of the federation. His tenure brought extensive staff reductions, asset sales, committee changes, and a strengthened internal comptroller.[2] Interpretations of the outcome remain distinct; a critical account acknowledges the scale of the changes but judges that the federation did not become an effective trade union.[17]

Ramon’s later political activity centered on territorial separation and party realignment. He participated in initiatives related to withdrawal from Lebanon, the separation barrier, Gaza disengagement, and Kadima’s formation, and advocated arrangements for Jerusalem that distinguished between Jewish and Arab neighborhoods and proposed a special regime for the holy sites.[18][23]

He left the Knesset in 2009 after 26 years of service. In 2012, he left Kadima and announced an effort to create a new centrist party.[1][13]

In August 2006, the attorney general decided to indict Ramon on suspicion of committing an indecent act without consent against a female officer serving in the Prime Minister’s Office. The indictment said the officer had asked for a photograph with him and that Ramon continued to hug and kissed her as she tried to leave. Ramon maintained that the kiss was consensual and resigned as justice minister.[29] His trial remained ongoing at the end of 2006.[30]

On January 31, 2007, the Tel Aviv Magistrates’ Court unanimously convicted Ramon. The court found the complainant credible, ruled that he had kissed her against her will, and rejected his claim that he had been framed to remove him from office.[29][31] Sources use different English legal terminology: the State Department called the offense an “indecent act,” while a Congressional Research Service report referred to sexual harassment and said the court upheld a conviction for “indecent assault.”[21][3]

On March 29, the court left the conviction in place but ruled that the offense did not involve moral turpitude. Ramon received 120 hours of community service and was ordered to pay NIS 15,000 in compensation to the complainant.[28] The State Department gave the equivalent as $3,750.[3] A later judicial review identified failures in the police and prosecution’s handling of wiretap material but found no basis for Ramon’s claim that investigative material had deliberately been concealed.[28]

The finding that the offense did not involve moral turpitude opened the way for Ramon’s return to political office, and Olmert appointed him vice premier in July 2007.[21] The appointment drew protests.[3] In December, the High Court of Justice rejected three petitions seeking to bar him from the cabinet. Justices Ayala Procaccia and Asher Grunis rejected the petitions, while Justice Edna Arbel dissented, arguing that the appointment damaged public confidence and the rule of law. The majority concluded that the appointment was not so unreasonable as to warrant judicial intervention.[32]

Ramon later called the kissing incident a personal mistake and said he regretted it.[28] In an interview concerning his autobiography, he alleged that the investigation had been intended to stop his efforts to reform the legal system. He said he had drafted 22 proposed reforms intended to “normalize” the system. The allegation concerning the investigation was Ramon’s belief, not a court finding.[12]