National Union (Israel)

National Union brought together smaller right-wing parties around opposition to territorial concessions and Palestinian statehood, but it did not retain a single organizational composition throughout its history.[1][3] The name applied at different times to a joint electoral list, a parliamentary bloc involving Yisrael Beiteinu, and a later formation associated particularly with Tkuma.[1][5] Its history therefore encompasses both cooperation among distinct parties and efforts to consolidate them into broader political organizations.[1][4]

The alliance's parliamentary activity alternated between participation in government and opposition from the right.[6][7] It joined Ariel Sharon's government after his 2001 election victory, resigned in March 2002, and returned after the January 2003 election.[8][7] Its seven-seat presence in Sharon's second government ended in the dispute over disengagement in 2004.[2] Following the 2009 election, its four-member faction remained outside Benjamin Netanyahu's government, regarding him as insufficiently committed to the settlement enterprise.[9][6]

Electoral cooperation with the National Religious Party and Jewish Home became another recurring feature of its development.[4] A joint National Union–National Religious Party list won nine seats in 2006, while the Jewish Home list incorporating Tkuma won twelve in 2013.[4][8] These joint totals represented broader electoral arrangements rather than the independent strength of an unchanged National Union organization.[4][8]

The National Union list that contested the May 17, 1999 election comprised Herut, Moledet, and Tkuma, with Benjamin “Benny” Begin as its leader.[1] Eight sitting Knesset members supported the list, but it secured four seats.[1] Its final result was 100,181 votes, or 3 percent of the vote, in the election for the Fifteenth Knesset.[10] The elected members were Michael Kleiner, Benyamin “Benny” Elon, Hanan Porat, and Rehavam Ze'evi.[11]

Tkuma supplied an important religious-Zionist component of the new alliance.[1] Its roots lay in the departure of Hanan Porat and Zvi Hendel from the National Religious Party following the Wye Agreement in late 1998.[12] Tkuma emerged from that split as a party of right-wing religious figures associated with the Yesha Council, a settlers' organization, and entered the 1999 election under Porat and Hendel's leadership.[1][12] Its participation alongside Herut and Moledet brought Porat into the Knesset on the National Union list.[1]

Begin initially announced a candidacy for prime minister as well as leading the parliamentary list.[1] He withdrew that candidacy the day before the election without endorsing either remaining candidate.[1] After the parliamentary result, he resigned, and Ze'evi became head of the National Union faction.[1] Ehud Barak won the prime-ministerial election.[11]

The alliance subsequently changed its parliamentary structure.[1] In 2000, Moledet and Tkuma joined Yisrael Beiteinu's Knesset faction in a technical bloc called National Union–Yisrael Beiteinu.[1] Kleiner did not participate and instead established a separate Herut faction.[1] Herut announced in February 2000 that it was leaving the alliance and would again operate independently.[13] Yisrael Beiteinu, led by Avigdor Lieberman, initially appealed to immigrants from the former Soviet Union.[7] The enlarged arrangement thus differed in membership from the list that had contested the 1999 election.[1]

National Union entered Sharon's government after his 2001 election victory.[7] In October, Lieberman and Ze'evi announced their resignations in protest against a decision to transfer Hebron's Abu Sneina neighborhood to Palestinian rule.[7] They argued that the move would expose Jewish residents to Palestinian snipers and terrorist threats.[7] Ze'evi, then tourism minister, was assassinated in a Jerusalem hotel on October 17, hours before the resignations were due to take effect.[7][14]

At Sharon's request, Lieberman and newly appointed minister Benny Elon withdrew the party's resignation.[7] National Union nevertheless left the government in March 2002, protesting what it considered an insufficiently forceful approach toward the Palestinian Authority.[15][7] Ahead of the January 2003 election, the alliance included Yisrael Beiteinu, Moledet, and Tkuma.[16] Its campaign, conducted during the al-Aqsa Intifada, advocated “transfer” as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[7]

Led by Lieberman, the National Union list received 173,973 votes, or 5.5 percent, in January 2003 and won seven seats.[17] It then entered a government comprising Likud, Shinui, the National Religious Party, and National Union.[18] The governing coalition had 68 members: Likud held 40 seats, Shinui 15, National Union seven, and the National Religious Party six.[19] Lieberman served as transportation minister and Elon as tourism minister.[2]

Sharon's disengagement plan precipitated the alliance's next departure from government.[2] The plan concerned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four settlements in the northern West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria.[20] National Union opposed the proposal, and Sharon dismissed Lieberman and Elon in June 2004 to remove their opposition from the cabinet.[2][18] Lieberman's dismissal took place on June 4, after he said that he intended to vote against disengagement.[7]

National Union withdrew from the government, removing its seven seats from Sharon's 68-seat coalition.[2] Sharon also accepted the resignation of a National Religious Party minister as he sought cabinet approval, which the cabinet gave on June 6, 2004.[18] Disagreement over disengagement subsequently led to departures by National Religious Party ministers as well, and Sharon formed a new government on January 10, 2005 to secure approval of the plan.[20] National Union's break with Sharon therefore involved both its opposition to the withdrawal itself and the loss of its place in the governing coalition.[2][20]

Yisrael Beiteinu left the National Union framework before the 2006 election and contested that election independently.[21] During this period, several Knesset members who had left the National Religious Party, headed by Effie Eitam, joined National Union.[22] National Union and the National Religious Party agreed in February 2006 to run together, and their joint list won nine seats.[22] Its listed members included Benny Elon, Zvi Hendel, Arye Eldad, and Uri Ariel.[21]

The joint list did not join Ehud Olmert's government.[23] Its nine seats were part of a Knesset in which Kadima, Labor, the Pensioners Party, and Meretz—parties supporting withdrawal—held a combined numerical majority of 61.[24] Cooperation between National Union and the National Religious Party continued to generate proposals for a more permanent organizational union.[25]

In November 2008, the National Religious Party, Moledet, and Tkuma agreed to disband in favor of a new right-wing party, although the proposal still required ratification by their central committees.[25] Ahi, another component of National Union, had not yet decided whether to join, while Effi Eitam and Arye Eldad were not expected to run in the proposed party.[25] The announced agenda emphasized education and Israel's Jewish identity, alongside social welfare, integrity in public life, Jewish moral values, settlement, and political and security issues.[26]

The proposed structure assigned selection of the Knesset list to a public council chaired by retired major general Yaakov Amidror, while an internal election would choose the party chair.[26] The new organization took the name Jewish Home, but the attempted consolidation soon fractured.[27] In December 2008, following the public council's failure to unite the different elements, the arrangement split into Jewish Home–New National Religious Party, National Union, and Ahi.[27] Disagreement over the electoral list contributed to National Union members' decision to run separately.[26]

Moledet and members of Tkuma re-established National Union with Hatikva.[4] By January 2009, Jewish Home and National Union had emerged as the two principal alternatives from the earlier arrangement; a Jerusalem Post election guide characterized National Union as the more hawkish of the two.[28] National Union's leading candidates included Yaakov Katz, Uri Ariel, Arye Eldad, Michael Ben-Ari, and Uri Bank.[28] It won four seats, electing Katz, Ariel, Eldad, and Ben-Ari, while Jewish Home won three.[29][30]

The four-member National Union faction remained in opposition as Netanyahu formed a government with right-religious parties and Labor.[9] Its criticism came from the right: the faction considered Netanyahu insufficiently committed to settlements, while other opposition forces opposed him from the left.[6] In 2011, National Union still held four seats and remained outside the government.[31] During the Eighteenth Knesset, its members occasionally proposed legislation that would effectively declare Israeli sovereignty over the territories.[32] Those proposals did not pass, although some attracted enough support to create political difficulty for Netanyahu, who professed support for a two-state solution.[32]

Internal disagreements again reshaped National Union ahead of the 2013 election.[33] In November 2012, Arye Eldad and Michael Ben-Ari broke away to establish Strong Israel, or Otzma L'Israel.[33] The faction had experienced months of disagreement, chiefly over whether to hold a primary.[33] Yaakov Katz was replaced as leader by Uri Ariel, and Moledet gave the National Union name to Tkuma.[33] Hatikva and Eretz Yisrael Shelanu left the alliance, while Tkuma chose to run with Jewish Home.[4]

The combined Jewish Home list, led by Naftali Bennett, won twelve seats in January 2013 and joined Netanyahu's government.[8][23] The list received 345,985 votes, or 9.12 percent.[34] Within its twelve-seat representation, Jewish Home accounted for eight seats and Tkuma, previously part of National Union, for four.[35] A pre-election estimate of twelve to fourteen seats for the joint ticket was a forecast rather than an election result.[36] Jewish Home's strength subsequently fell to eight seats in the Twentieth Knesset.[23]

In January 2019, Bezalel Smotrich defeated Uri Ariel in the election for National Union chair.[37] Smotrich had entered the Knesset on the Jewish Home list as National Union's representative.[37] Before the April election, National Union and Jewish Home joined Otzma Yehudit in the Union of Right-Wing Parties, a technical electoral bloc that won five seats.[37] Rafi Peretz headed the combined list, with Smotrich second.[38] Netanyahu had urged inclusion of Otzma Yehudit to reduce the risk of right-wing votes being lost through parties failing to cross the electoral threshold.[38]

For the March 2020 election, Bennett chose a joint Yamina slate bringing together his New Right party and National Union without Otzma Yehudit.[39] During the 2021 election period, Smotrich left the Yamina framework and announced that National Union would change its name to Religious Zionism.[12] The Religious Zionist Party, formed in 2021, continued the National Union–Tkuma lineage.[5] It ran in 2022 on a list with Otzma Yehudit and Noam, although that partnership subsequently broke up.[5] The parties' joint electoral participation did not eliminate their separate parliamentary identities: Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit acted as distinct Knesset factions.[12]

Opposition to a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River was a central National Union position, accompanied by support for annexing territories captured in 1967.[3] Its program also supported legalization of unauthorized outposts and construction of new settlements.[31] The alliance opposed dividing Jerusalem and advocated retaining and formally annexing the territories.[40] Its opposition to concessions extended to agreements with the Palestinian Authority, which its 2009 platform considered null and void.[14]

The 2009 platform opposed relinquishing any part of the Land of Israel, supported settlement expansion, and rejected concessions on the Golan Heights.[14] On security, it argued that Israel required military victory and could not rely on a political solution alone.[14] It also called for compulsory military or national service.[14] These positions accompanied parliamentary efforts to advance Israeli sovereignty over the territories, including the unsuccessful legislative proposals introduced during the Eighteenth Knesset.[32]

Jerusalem occupied a prominent place in the platform as the Jewish people's eternal capital.[14] National Union called for construction throughout the city and relocation of official Israeli institutions there.[14] It advocated free access to holy places, including Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount.[14] Its domestic territorial-development agenda also included funding and settlement in the Negev and Galilee.[14]

The party's program extended beyond borders and security.[14] Its 2009 economic proposals included reducing government and public-sector spending, privatizing government companies, and reducing Israel's financial dependence on the United States.[14] It sought to preserve the state's Jewish and Zionist character through religious legislation and a broad consensus.[14] A 2005 platform also called for a written constitution defining that character alongside democratic principles and civil rights.[41]

That earlier platform proposed addressing the Palestinian refugee issue through “transfer by agreement (population exchange),” involving settlement of refugees in Arab countries in place of Jews who had emigrated from those countries to Israel.[41] It also called for Arab citizens of Israel to swear allegiance to the Israeli flag, national anthem, and laws.[41] These proposals formed part of a program opposing relinquishment of land or establishment of a Palestinian political entity between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.[41]

National Union provided a recurring electoral framework for parties emphasizing territorial retention, settlements, and opposition to Palestinian statehood.[3][40] Its composition linked religious-Zionist organizations with other right-wing factions, including Herut and, for a period, Yisrael Beiteinu.[1] Although later descriptions characterized its constituency as nationalist and Ashkenazi Orthodox, its earlier parliamentary arrangements included parties with distinct political backgrounds and support bases.[3][7]

Its role in the disengagement crisis demonstrated the practical consequences of its territorial commitments.[2] The removal of its ministers and departure of its seven-seat faction reduced Sharon's parliamentary coalition, while the cabinet proceeded to endorse the withdrawal plan.[2][18] Subsequent cooperation with the National Religious Party and Jewish Home offered a different route to influence through joint electoral representation.[4][8]

The alliance also formed part of the organizational lineage of later religious-Zionist politics.[5] Tkuma's participation in Jewish Home, Smotrich's election as National Union chair, and the subsequent Religious Zionism name connected the earlier alliance to later electoral formations.[23][37] In the 2019 Union of Right-Wing Parties, its partners appealed to a religious-Zionist constituency, principally Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews, including supporters of settlements and annexation.[42] The later Religious Zionist Party continued the National Union–Tkuma line without preserving the original 1999 alliance's membership.[1][5]

The alliance's advocacy of population transfer or exchange, allegiance requirements for Arab citizens, and rejection of Palestinian statehood involved substantive disputes over territorial control and the rights and political status of Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel.[3][41] Its 2003 campaign promoted “transfer,” while the 2005 platform specified “transfer by agreement”; these formulations should be distinguished rather than treated as a single, unchanging proposal.[7][41]

Disengagement produced a major public and governmental confrontation, culminating in the dismissal of National Union's ministers and its departure from Sharon's coalition.[2] The alliance's repeated mergers and splits also reflected significant internal disagreements over electoral representation and leadership selection, notably during the failed consolidation of 2008 and the breakup preceding the 2013 election.[26][33]