Hatnua

Hatnua placed negotiations with the Palestinians at the center of a broader political program that also addressed Israel’s domestic and socioeconomic affairs.[3] It positioned itself near the political center, combining a liberal orientation with a particularly forceful commitment to reviving the peace process.[3] The party presented a negotiated two-state solution as necessary to preserve Israel’s security, prosperity, and stability as a Jewish and democratic state.[3] Alongside that diplomatic emphasis, it advocated reducing inequality, protecting natural resources, widening participation in national service and employment, and supporting different streams of Jewish religious life.[3]

The party brought together Livni and politicians whose previous affiliations included Kadima and Labor, among them Amram Mitzna, Amir Peretz, and Meir Sheetrit.[1] Its electoral arrangements changed considerably between its first two national campaigns: in 2013 it competed independently of Labor and Yesh Atid, while running on a joint ticket with the Green Party; in 2015 it joined Labor in a common electoral list.[3][6] Its participation in government likewise centered on translating its diplomatic program into a negotiating role for Livni rather than remaining outside a coalition headed by Netanyahu.[2]

Hatnua’s institutional influence was closely associated with its founder’s public responsibilities: Livni served as justice minister and as the government’s principal representative in the 2013–2014 negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.[7] Later, its alliance with Labor placed her second on the joint electoral list and initially envisaged her sharing the premiership through a rotation agreement if the alliance formed a government.[8] After the Labor partnership ended, Hatnua did not contest the 2019 election, and Livni’s attempts to secure another alliance were unsuccessful.[4][5]

Livni announced Hatnua’s formation on November 27, 2012, returning to politics after losing the Kadima leadership primary to Shaul Mofaz in March and then leaving political life.[3] The party’s name, also rendered HaTnuah or Hatnu’ah, meant “The Movement.”[1] Its creation came shortly before the deadline for registering parties and assembling election lists for the January 2013 contest, leaving it a brief period in which to establish an electoral presence.[9][10] Its political infrastructure drew on Hetz, a faction that had broken away from Shinui in 2006.[3]

At the party’s launch in Tel Aviv, Livni said she wanted to fight for a “democratic Israel” and called for changes in both domestic and foreign policy.[11] She criticized the government for engaging in dialogue with Hamas while avoiding negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, which she characterized as supporting a two-state solution and having prevented terrorism.[11] Her launch agenda also included military conscription for the ultra-Orthodox and measures intended to help young people secure housing and livelihoods.[11] The new organization thus began with a diplomatic message but also with explicit proposals concerning service obligations and economic opportunity.[11]

The party attracted figures with experience in other established parties, including former Labor leaders Amram Mitzna and Amir Peretz.[10] Four Kadima Knesset members—Yoel Hasson, Rachel Adatto, Shlomo Mola, and Magali Wahaba—also joined Livni’s new organization.[8] Meir Sheetrit was another former Kadima or Labor figure associated with the party.[1] Livni formulated Hatnua’s candidate list herself rather than selecting its candidates through party primaries.[6] Its 2013 list began with Livni, followed by Mitzna and Peretz.[12]

Before the election, Labor, Yesh Atid, and Hatnua considered presenting a joint list but ultimately ran independently.[6] Livni was identified among the potential alternatives to lead a governing coalition, alongside Labor leader Shelly Yachimovich and Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid.[13] Hatnua’s campaign chiefly emphasized renewed peace talks with the Palestinians, making that issue its most conspicuous distinction in the election campaign.[9]

Hatnua’s platform called for reviving negotiations with the Palestinians and pursuing a two-state solution, presenting an agreement as a security, economic, social, environmental, and ethical need.[3] The party linked that objective to maintaining Israel as both Jewish and democratic and to securing its long-term prosperity and stability.[3] During the 2012 campaign, it advocated exploring what could be achieved with the Palestinians and avoiding international condemnation over settlements.[10] These were the party’s arguments for diplomatic engagement, rather than promises that negotiations would necessarily produce an agreement.[10]

For the 2013 election, Hatnua ran on a joint ticket with the Green Party and incorporated many of its partner’s ideals into its own platform.[3] Environmental protection consequently appeared alongside diplomacy and social policy as a principal commitment.[3] The party pledged to address air and water pollution, the loss of open spaces, and the depletion of national resources.[3] Its participation in government included the environmental protection ministry, assigned under the coalition agreement to Amir Peretz.[2]

On socioeconomic policy, Hatnua proposed an “Iron Dome for Social Justice,” using that phrase for a program intended to reduce inequality.[3] It also said it had prepared a Basic Law on Social Rights designed to alter the constitutional balance on social-justice questions.[3] Housing and livelihoods for young people had featured in Livni’s launch remarks, while the broader party program emphasized domestic and socioeconomic issues alongside the peace process.[3][11] Both were presented as proposed party initiatives.[3]

Hatnua advocated universal military, national, or community service, arguing for changes to a system that exempted a growing number of 18-year-olds from national service.[3] Its program also called for integrating Haredi and Arab communities into service and the workforce.[3] In religious affairs, it supported pluralism, respect for different approaches to Jewish life, and equal state support for all streams of Judaism.[3] These commitments connected the party’s social agenda with questions of civic participation, employment, and the relationship between the state and Jewish religious institutions.[3]

In the January 22, 2013 election, Hatnua received 189,167 valid votes, about 5.0 percent of valid votes, and won six seats in the 19th Knesset.[6] Its final result was below several earlier projections: one pre-election assessment anticipated eight or nine seats, another projected nine, and an average of polls published shortly before election day indicated seven.[9][10][6] These figures were campaign forecasts rather than results; the party’s actual parliamentary representation was six members.[6]

Hatnua became the first party to join Netanyahu’s prospective coalition after the election.[1] On February 19, 2013, it signed a coalition agreement under which Livni was designated justice minister and Amir Peretz was to receive the environmental protection portfolio.[2] Livni explained the decision to enter government in terms of the authority it offered to pursue negotiations aimed at ending the conflict with the Palestinians.[14] Describing the party’s purpose shortly after the agreement, she said its founders had “vowed to fight for a diplomatic agreement, even if it doesn't pay off politically.”[15]

After approximately six weeks of coalition contacts and negotiations, the government brought together Likud-Beiteinu, Yesh Atid, HaBayit HaYehudi, and Hatnua, commanding 68 Knesset seats.[6] Hatnua supplied two ministers, who headed two ministries within that arrangement.[6] The ultra-Orthodox parties remained outside the coalition, while an ad hoc alliance between Yesh Atid and HaBayit HaYehudi had constrained Netanyahu’s options during its formation.[16] Livni served as a Hatnua justice minister in Israel’s 33rd government, whose tenure ran from March 18, 2013, to December 3, 2014.[17]

The coalition’s divisions later intensified over the Israel Hayom bill, proposed legislation defining Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, and the proposed 2015 budget.[16] Netanyahu dismissed Livni from the government on December 2, 2014, and moved to dissolve the governing arrangement and call early elections.[8][16] Her departure brought an end to Hatnua’s participation in that government and preceded its decision to contest the next election in partnership with Labor.[8]

For the March 2015 election, Hatnua and Labor formed a joint electoral list known as the Zionist Union or Zionist Camp, led by Yitzhak Herzog, with Livni placed second.[1][8] Their initial agreement envisaged a rotation if Herzog became prime minister: he would serve the first two years, followed by Livni for the next two.[8] Livni announced the day before the election that the rotation arrangement would be dropped.[1] The joint ticket won 24 of the Knesset’s 120 seats and finished second to Likud, which won 30.[18]

The alliance’s 24 seats exceeded the 21 seats Labor and Hatnua had held separately in the preceding Knesset.[6][16] Coalition arithmetic nevertheless limited the alliance’s ability to form a government: the left, Arab, and center groupings together lacked sufficient seats without the Joint List, whose leaders had said it would not enter a coalition, including one led by Herzog.[16]

On January 1, 2019, Labor chairman Avi Gabbay announced that he was ending the partnership with Livni and that the parties would not run together in the coming election.[4] The partnership agreement allowed each leader to nominate three candidates, including themselves, among the joint list’s top 20 positions.[4] Relations between the leaders had become strained, and polls at the time suggested that the united party would win ten seats.[4]

Livni announced on February 18, 2019, that Hatnua would not contest the coming election and that she was leaving politics.[5] She said the party lacked enough strength to implement its program independently and that she did not want its supporters’ votes to be wasted.[5] Attempts to find another partnership had not succeeded: she had held unsuccessful talks with Benny Gantz and had also discussed a possible joint run with Ehud Barak and Dan Meridor.[5] Polling indicated that Hatnua was unlikely to win seats on its own.[5]

The February 2013 coalition agreement tasked Livni with negotiating with the Palestinians “in order to reach a political accord with them that will end the conflict.”[2] It provided for a ministerial team headed by the prime minister and including Livni and the defense and foreign ministers, with Livni appointed as negotiator.[2] The arrangement gave Hatnua’s central campaign issue a defined place in government while retaining the prime minister’s supervisory authority over the negotiations.[2][14]

Livni was also to join the prime minister’s inner cabinet, and Netanyahu authorized her in March to lead talks with the Palestinian negotiating team.[14][8] In addition to her justice portfolio, she chaired the Ministerial Committee for Legislation.[8] Her negotiating authority did not include independently committing the state to an agreement: a draft required government approval, and any accord was to be submitted to the government and Knesset and, where the law required it, to a public referendum.[2][14] The government’s coalition agreements also recognized preserving Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and protecting defensible borders as important objectives.[2]

Livni and Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat began negotiations on July 29, 2013.[19] She served as the government’s point person during the 2013–2014 negotiating effort with the Palestinian Authority.[7] The initiative ran until April 23, 2014; the talks ended after Fatah and Hamas agreed to form a unity government and Israel’s cabinet voted to suspend negotiations.[19] Hatnua’s participation in government therefore produced a formal negotiating role and participation in an actual diplomatic initiative, but not the conflict-ending agreement contemplated in its coalition terms.[2][19]

During the early months of the government, Livni described President Barack Obama’s Jerusalem speech to students as a “Zionist vision.”[20] The combination of her support for a two-state solution and her place in a government containing right-of-center parties made the scope of her influence an important question surrounding the cabinet’s diplomatic direction.[20] The coalition framework nevertheless explicitly reserved a negotiating function for her and collective approval powers for the government and Knesset.[2]

Hatnua secured responsibility for justice and a leading negotiating role despite holding only six Knesset seats after the 2013 election.[2] Its coalition agreement reflected the purpose Livni publicly assigned to the party: pursuing a diplomatic agreement even where that course might not produce a political reward.[15] The party’s program also extended beyond diplomacy, bringing social rights, environmental protection, universal service, and religious pluralism into the same electoral platform.[3]

Its move from a separate 2013 list to a joint ticket with Labor in 2015 marked a substantial change in electoral strategy.[6][8] The resulting 24-seat alliance became the second-largest parliamentary list, but its result did not supply the coalition numbers needed for a Herzog-led government without participation that the Joint List had ruled out.[18][16] The proposed premiership rotation would have placed Hatnua’s leader at the head of government during a second two-year term, but Livni abandoned that arrangement immediately before the election.[1]

The party’s withdrawal in 2019 followed both the end of its Labor partnership and unsuccessful efforts to secure another electoral alliance.[4][5] Livni’s explanation emphasized the gap between retaining a political program and having enough independent electoral strength to implement it.[5] Her decision not to run was explicitly tied to avoiding wasted votes when polling suggested the party would not obtain parliamentary representation on its own.[5]

During the December 2014 coalition breakup, Netanyahu’s political partners accused Livni and Yair Lapid of working behind the scenes with ultra-Orthodox factions to replace him.[21] Both ministers denied the allegation, which remained a competing political claim rather than an established explanation of the government’s collapse.[21]

Before the 2015 election, attorney David Shimron and Likud youth chairman David Shain accused Labor, Hatnua, and the Zionist Camp ticket of election-law violations involving fundraising, organizational coordination, and campaigning.[1] The Zionist Camp denied the accusations.[1] A complaint was submitted to the Central Elections Committee, but the contemporaneous report did not include a ruling; the accusations therefore did not establish that violations occurred.[1]