Election Day: Feb. 10, 2009

About Hadash

Hadash now has three seats in the Knesset.

Hadash was created by the New Communist List (Rakach) towards the end of the 8th Knesset, after the party outside the Knesset was joined by part of the Black Panthers and other left-wing non-communist groups. Hadash, which is a Jewish and Arab party, ran for the 9th, 10th, 13th and 15th Knessets under this name. In elections for the 11th, 12th, 14th, and 16th Knessets, Hadash ran under joint names together with other parties.

Platform: From its inception Hadash has advocated a complete Israeli withdrawal from all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, in addition to full equality for Israel’s Arab citizens.

Hadash recently merged with the grassroots 'Tarabut' movement, which works against the separation barrier.

Dov Khenin, who recently lost his bid to become mayor of Tel Aviv, is the only Jewish member of the party.

Chairman Knesset Member Mohammad Barakeh recently said, "We are a Jewish-Arab political party that has become saddled with the identity of a solely Arab party. We are very proud of all of our Arab members, but we also want to strengthen our image in Jewish circles."

Candidates will be chosen this week. Current MKs are Mohammad Barakeh, Dov Khenin and Hanna Swaid. Other probable candidates are Afu Aghbaria, Yusef Attawne, Mannal Shalabi and Dakhil Hamed.

About Arab Center

Arab Center has no seats in the current Knesset.

Ta'al-Ra'am Knesset Member Sheikh Abbas Zkoor has formed the Arab Center party (Hizb al-Wasat al-Arab), which may add Arab MKs to the Knesset and also may leave itself and other parties without enough votes to enter the Knesset at all.

He said his party would consider joining a center-left government coalition "in exchange for receiving the rights of the Arab population in the State of Israel, budgets for Arab localities, and a change in policy toward the Arab population."

Science, Culture and Sport Minister Raleb Majadle (Labor) declined an invitation to head the new Arab party even though current polls show that he will not be re-elected.

Platform: Arab Center calls for attention to social problems and is against making the struggle with the Palestinian Authority the only issue facing the country's Arab sector. It promotes Jewish-Arab dialogue.

MK Zkoor previously broke away from the Islamic Movement and said he wants to focus on housing and employment.
 
"We ask Israel to extend its hand in peace first with all its citizens inside the State of Israel, with Jewish and Arab citizens, that they be equal regarding their rights and regarding their daily lives. And if Israel is able to succeed in making real peace inside Israel, she will succeed with her neighbors," he said.

"We have the right to live the same way that Jews live in terms of housing, streets, schools, the workplace, industry, in opening up all areas of life for all citizens that live in the State of Israel, which calls itself a democratic state."

Candidates: MK Sheikh Abbas Zkoor, who lives in on  Akko (Acre); and former MK Mohammed Kanaan, a resident of the Galilee village of Tamra; and Hussein Mahemmed, a lawyer from the Um El-Faham, located in Wadi Ara and several miles east of Hadera and the Mediterranean Coast.

About Green Parties

There are three separate parties with the word "Green." None of them has ever won representation in the Knesset.

The largest of the factions, known as the Green Party, was founded in 1997 following the Maccabi bridge disaster in Tel Aviv, in which several people died due in part to pollution in the Yarkon River. It has announced it will run on a joint list with the religious and liberal Meimad party, headed by Rabbi Michael Melchior. The merger significantly improves the Green party's chance to win its first representation in the next Knesset after previous failures. Current polls give the environmental-based movement anywhere from zero to three mandates.

A separate group is the Green Leaf party, whose leading candidate comedian Gil Kopatch said his platform no longer includes the party's former initiative for legalizing marijuana but rather wants to show that there is an alternative to regular political parties.  A third party, the Green Movement recently was founded and is recognized by several European environmental Green movements.

The Green Party platform focuses primarily on environmental issues and promotes "politics of cooperation that will promote peace." It also supports citizens being able to choose their lifestyle without legal limitations so long as they do not harm others or the environment.
 
The party backs train transportation as opposed to paving new roads. It does not back Jewish development in Judea and Samaria.

Chairman Peer Visner recently lost his bid to become mayor of Tel Aviv, where he was deputy mayor.

Candidates: Eran Ben-Yemini will head the list of candidates for the Green party within the Meimad list. The Green party has not yet announced all of its candidates for the upcoming elections.

About Israel Is Our Home (Yisrael Beiteinu)

Israel Is Our Home (Yisrael Beiteinu) now has 11 seats in the Knesset.
 
Israel Is Our Home (Yisrael Beiteinu) was founded by a group of new immigrants and old-timers, headed by Knesset Member chairman Avigdor Lieberman. He had served as director of the Likud and then director of the prime minister's office under Binyamin Netanyahu before after breaking with the Likud and forming Yisrael Beiteinu, which was first elected to the 15th Knesset in 1999 with three MKs.

During the Knesset session, the party merged with National Union and in the 2003 elections it won four seats out of the 10 MKs who were elected on the combined list. In the 2006 elections for the 17th Knesset, Yisrael Beiteinu ran as an independent list and won 11 Knesset seats.

The party's current platform emphasizes what it terms "the demographic threat" of a large Arab population side-by-side with a Jewish majority in a single political entity. It calls for a "separation in practice from the Arabs of Judea and Samaria, as well as from most of the Arabs in the State of Israel...." through population and territorial exchanges.
 
The party platform also supports an oath of loyalty to the State, including acceptance of the state's declaration to be a Jewish state and the transition from a parliamentary to a presidential regime, similar to states such as the United States, and an independent judiciary.

Its platform also vows a war against crime, including harsher punishments for law-breakers, and for improving the education system by developing a merit incentive system for teachers, based on the improvement of their students.

Yisrael Beiteinu supports privatizing government companies and encouraging competition.
 
Chairman Avigdor Lieberman was born in Moldova, in the former Soviet Union, in 1958 and now lives in the eastern Gush Etzion community of Nokdim, near Tekoa in Gush Etzion (Judea). 

He was Minister of Infrastutctures in the first government of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and also Trasnportation in the second Shaorn government before quitting over the Disengagement plan that resulted in wiping out all Jewish presence in the Gaza region and parts of northern Samaria.
 
In the recently concluded government of outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, he was Strategic Affairs Minister until his party quit the government coalition.
 
Candidates for nomination to the Knesset are being interviewed at a weeklong convention in the Golan town of Katzrin and then will be chosen for the party's list of prospective MKs.

About Jewish Home

The Jewish Home party is a spin-off of the National Religious Party (NRP) and the religious Moledet and Tekuma components of the National Union party, which has nine seats in the current Knesset. The party is governed by a 38-member committee of rabbis, professors and other public figures.

Platform: Jewish Home tried to unify following in-fighting from the moment it was formed but many of its principal members have left to join MK Aryeh Eldad's HaTikva party. and its platform is not totally clear. Its chairman, Rabbi Prof. Daniel Hershkowitz, has stated that it is "the right of every Jew to live in every place in the Land of Israel."

However, when asked if would apply that principle in practice, Rabbi Hershkowitz added, "When you come to an agreement, there should be an awareness of this right and it should be in the background.... [Each] case, according to the circumstances, for each agreement, according to its price, one must weigh everything."

He also has maintained that the party is not "right-wing or left-wing but rather "a party that is building a vision according to the values of Judaism - the Torah, Land and People of Israel - and in this party there is room for everyone."
 
Chairman Rabbi Prof. Daniel Hershkowitz, 55, is rabbi of the Ahuza neighborhood in Haifa, where the Technion is located. Hershkowitz teaches mathematics at the school and has been head of the Technion Faculty Association since 2005. He was a senior officer in military intelligence and is married with five children.
 
Candidates:

Rabbi Prof. Daniel Hershkowitz
MK Zevulun Orlev, leader of the former National Religious Party
Uri Orbach, writer and radio personality
MK Nissan Slomiansky
Sar-Shalom Jerby, secretary-general of the former NRP
Liora Minke, Emunah Women chairperson
Shella Shorshan
Avraham Negosa, a leader of Ethiopian Jewry in Israel
Rabbi Ophir Cohen, formerly of Kfar Darom in Gush Katif
Elyashiv Reichner, journalist
Elchanan Glatt

About Kadima

Kadima now has 29 seats in the Knesset.

Kadima was created in November 2005 when Likud party chairman and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dissolved the 16th Knesset due to an inability to maintain a majority coalition and effectively govern. 

Facing stiff opposition from within his Likud party over the policy of a unilateral military withdrawal and expulsion of Jews from the Gaza and northern Samarian regions, Sharon decided to formally divorce himself from the Likud platform by creating a new party named Kadima. While nearly two-thirds of Likud MKs chose to remain with the Likud party, 14 of Sharon's closest supporters agreed to join Kadima, the minimum amount required for a new government faction to receive financial and constitutional benefits. Disgruntled politicians from other parties including recently ousted Labor party chairman Shimon Peres also joined Kadima.

Shortly following the formation of the Kadima, new party chairman and PM Ariel Sharon suffered a devastating cerebral hemorrhage, leaving him in a coma. Deputy Prime Minister and Sharon subordinate Ehud Olmert assumed the role of Acting Prime Minister and Kadima party chairman.

Under mounting charges of corruption, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced his intention to resign in 2008. In September Kadima held elections for a successor, and Tzipi Livni closely defeated rival Shaul Mofaz.

The party Platform is "to keep the State of Israel as a Jewish Democratic State" and "to expedite the formation of an Arab state in most of the territories liberated by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War, as suggested by the United States backed 'Roadmap to Peace.' Jewish majority in Israel will be preserved by territorial concessions to Palestinians. The remainder of Israel will operate as a democratic Jewish state and homeland."

It has stated that Ma'aleh Adumim, Ariel and parts of Gush Etzion will not be conceded to the PA and will remain within Israel's separation-security barrier.

Kadima favors modifying Israel's political system to enable the bypassing of party's internal central committees on major policy issues.

Chairwoman Tzipi Livni was born in 1958 in Tel Aviv, served as an officer in the Israeli Defense Forces, and afterwards served in the Mossad, the Israeli Intelligence Agency. Livni completed a degree in Law and practiced as a lawyer for 10 years.

She first entered the Knesset as a member of the Likud in 1999 and supported laws which were against the Arab right of return and against the division of Jerusalem. Livni served as minister of several departments, and as Justice Minister she was instrumental in orchestrating the legal side of the law of disengagement from Gaza in 2005.

She now is Foreign Minister and was primarily responsible for peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. She was instrumental in the 2007 Annapolis conference which laid out guidelines for a two state solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict.

In September 2008 Kadima held primaries for party leader. Livni defeated rival Shaul Mofaz to take charge. After she was unable to form a ruling coalition, new elections were ordered.

Candidates: Chairwoman Tzipi Livni and Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz were guaranteed the first two places on the list of candidates. The top 35 candidates are:

MK Tzipi Livni
MK Shaul Mofaz
MK Dalia Itzik
MK Tzachi HaNegbi
MK Ronnie Bar-On
MK Zev Boim
MK Meir Sheetrit
MK Ruhama Avraham-Balila
MK Avi Dichter
MK Marina Solodkin
MK Yoel Hasson
MK Gidon Ezra
MK Yaakov Edry
MK Eli Alfalo
Zev Bielski
MK Ronit Tirosh
MK Chain Ramon
Nachman Shai
MK Shlomo Mula
Robert Tibiev
MK Majalli Whbee
Rachel Adato
MK Yochanan Plesner
MK Shai Hermesh
MK Yisrael Hasson
Aryeh Binyamin Netanyahu
MK Otniel Shneller
Orit Zuaretz
Yulia Shamalov Berkovich
Nino Absadsa
MK Yitzchak Ben-Yisrael
Avner Barazani
Doron Avital
Avi Duan
MK Prof. Menachem Ben-Sasson

About Labor

Labor now has 19 seats (with Meimad) in the Knesset.

The Labor party is a Zionist social-democratic party established in 1968 following a union of Mapai, Ahdut Ha'Avoda, and Rafi. Its platform supports social pluralism and equality, territorial compromise with Israel's adversaries, and, since the 1990s, has advocated a soft socialist ("free market with a soul," in their lexicon) economic policy.

The Labor party links economic and social prosperity with attaining political agreements with the Arabs, particularly the Palestinian Authority, for ending the Arab-Israeli conflict. The platform calls for eliminating all Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria not part of settlement blocs that will be annexed to Israel.

On religious issues, the party stops short of favoring a separation between religion and state, calling instead for separating religion from politics. A provision that calls for providing for the religious needs of the entire public in all its streams, implies recognition of Reform, Conservative and other approaches to Jewish life.

Chairman Ehud Barak, the current Defense Minister, was Prime Minister from 1999-2001. He was commander of the elite Sayeret Matkal and led his men in storming a hijacked Sabena airliner in Tel Aviv. Barak also led a raid in Beirut to kill terrorists who had murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics and played a key role in planning the Entebbe raid in Uganda. He was appointed IDF Chief of Staff in 1991

After retiring from the IDF, he was a minister under Prime Ministers Yitzchak Rabin and Shimon Peres.

As Prime Minister, Barak withdrew Israeli troops from the South Lebanon Security Zone, held talks with Syria and offered Syria a full withdrawal to the internationally recognized border, just short of the pre-1967 lines.

In American-sponsored negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on Israeli territorial concessions, Barak agreed to the establishment of a PA west of the Jordan River and to the division of sovereignty in Jerusalem. He reportedly refused to agree to Arab sovereignty on the Temple Mount and to an influx of Arab refugees into the State of Israel, and insisted on a PLO statement that the conflict with Israel is over. PA Chairman Yasser Arafat's response was a terrorist campaign that came to be called "the Oslo War" or the "Al-Aqsa Intifada."

Barak lost his parliamentary majority in 2000 and was forced to resign. He then lost the 2001 elections to his Likud rival, Ariel Sharon. After leaving politics following his defeat at the polls, Barak returned to the Labor party stage and was elected party chairman in May 2007.

Barak, 66 years old, is a native Israeli whose parents founded Kibbutz Mishmar HaSharon. He married after a 2003 divorce. He has three daughters by his first marriage.

Candidates (in the order of nomination, by column, in primary elections):

About Likud

Likud now has 12 seats in the Knesset.

The Likud was founded in 1973, after the Yom Kippur War and before the elections for the 8th Knesset, as a merger of several parties initiated by Ariel Sharon. The main component was the Gachal party, itself a merger of Herut and the Liberal Party. The party was led, until his retirement in 1983, by long-time Herut leader Menachem Begin, a student of Zev Jabotinsky.
 
Likud leaders after Begin, all of whom have served as Prime Minister, have been Yitzchak Shamir, Binyamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon.
 
The Likud platform has change dramatically towards the upcoming elections. It previously promoted "the eternal, inalienable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, developing, settling and annexing the entire land."   

Under the former Likud government led by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the party reversed its policies and initiated the Disengagement Plan that resulted in absence of all Jewish civilian and Military presence in the Gaza and in on  part of northern Samaria. However, most of the Likud ministers opposed the plan and were fired from the government, which eventually was dissolved. Sharon then founded the Kadima party that was elected to form the next government.

Current chairman and former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu backed the Sharon plan but then voted against it and resigned from his ministerial post shortly before the execution of the plan.
 
In 2006, MK Netanyahu stated, "Final borders should include Jordan Valley, Golan Heights, Judean Desert, Jerusalem and settlement blocs, and the areas overlooking Ben Gurion International Airport, the Tel Aviv region and Route 443" and that "agreements will be submitted for public approval in a referendum."

The new platform in Hebrew, which has not yet been posted on the English site, states, "When the time arrives for final peace negotiations, the Likud will present clear red lines. The Likud and its leader insist that the responsibility for peace for Israelis rests in the hands of Israel, which will reserve its right to defend its borders, as fixed in United Nations resolutions 242 and 338." These resolutions call on Israel to withdraw from "areas" restored to the Jewish state in the Six-Day War in 1967 but is not clear if it refers to all of party of the land involved.
 
The new platform also declares that the Likud will preserve Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel.

Chairman MK Binyamin Netanyahu served as Israel's Prime Minister from 1996 to 1999, and is the author and editor of several books, including "Terrorism: How the West Can Win." He grew up in Jerusalem, spent his high school years in the United States, and enlisted in an IDF elite commando unit in 1967.  He is divorced and has re-married.

In 1984, after serving as Deputy Chief of Mission in the Israeli Embassy in Washington, he became Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations. In 1988, Netanyahu was elected to the Knesset, and was appointed Deputy Foreign Minister. During the Gulf War of 1991, he served as Israel's principal representative in the international arena. In October 1991, he was a senior member of the Israeli delegation to the Madrid Peace Conference, which initiated the first direct negotiations between Israel and Syria, Lebanon, and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation.

In March 1993, Netanyahu was elected Likud Party Chairman, and in May 1996, he was elected as Israel's 9th Prime Minister. 

Following his defeat at the hands of Ehud Barak in 1999, Netanyahu quit the Knesset.

Candidates for the next Knesset were elected in primary elections, but the party changed the rankings in an effort to move down Jewish Leadership faction leader Moshe Feiglin and his supporters and move up candidates loyal to Netanyahu:

MK Binyamin Netanyahu
MK Gidon Saar
MK Reuven Rivlin
MK Gilad Edran
Benny Begin
MK Moshe Kahlon
MK Silvan Shalom
Moshe Yaalon
MK Yuval Steinitz
Dr. Leah Ness
MK Yisrael Katz
MK Yuli Edelstein
MK Limor Livnat
Chaim Katz
Yossi Peled
MK Michael Eitan
Dan Meridor
Tzipi Hotobeli
Gila Gamliel
MK Zev Elkin, formerly of Kadima
Yariv Levin
Tzion Pinian
Ayoub Kara
Danny Danon
Carmel Shama
Ofir Akunis
Miri Regev
Alelli Admosi
Yitzchak Danino
David Even-Tzur
Kati Sheetrit
Keren Barak
Sagiv Asulin
Boaz HaEtzni
Guy Yifrach
Moshe Feiglin
Michael Ratzon
Ehud Yatom
Assaf Chefetz
Yechiel Leiter

About Meimad-Green

Meimad-Green: Meimad is represented in the Knesset as part of the Labor party. The Green party has no seats in the current Knesset.

"Meimad" is a Hebrew acronym for Jewish State, Democratic State, and it is a left-leaning religious-Zionist political party founded in 1999, based on the Meimad movement begun by Rabbi Yehuda Amital in 1988. Until the 2006 elections, the party received the 10th seat on the Labor Knesset list, but Labor ended that arrangement in the wake of polls that cast doubt on whether Labor will win 10 seats in the next Knesset. 

In the upcoming elections, Meimad will run as a separate party but also is including on its list the Green party. The merger significantly improves the Green party's chance to win its first representation in the next Knesset after previous failures. Current polls give the environmental-based movement anywhere form zero to three mandates, while Meimad so far has a zero ranking in the polls.

Its platform emphasizes the values of many social democratic parties, with the exception of religious issues, where Meimad advocates the inclusion of religious studies in Israeli public schools and encourages the use of rabbinical courts. Meimad, unlike Labor, takes a center-right approach to the Israel-Arab conflict.

Chairman Rabbi Melchior was first elected to the Knesset in 1999. He made aliyah to Israel from Denmark in 1986 and is a former chief rabbi of Norway. He is 54 and married with five children. Rabbi Melchior is a director of the Elie Wiesel foundation and is a rabbi of a congregation in Jerusalem, where he lives.

Freshman MK Ami Ayalon, who recently defected from Labor, recently retracted his announcement that he would join Meimad and head the party's candidate list and instead said he is quitting politics. 

Candidates: The party has not yet chosen its candidates except for Rabbi Melchior.

About Meretz

Meretz now has five seats in the Knesset.
. 
Meretz defines itself as a Jewish-Arab social democratic party. Toward the end of the 12th Knesset, the Mapam, Ratz, and Shinui parliamentary groups merged into a single parliamentary group. The common denominator among the three was their advocacy of an agreement with Arabs on the basis of a territorial compromise, and the establishment of a Palestinian Authority state, civil and human rights, and the separation of religion and state.

Its representation in the Knesset has declined from 12 seats in the 13th and 15th Knessets to five in the current legislature.

A fledgling left-wing party that offered itself as an alternative to Mertz has joined the party with the condition of holding the third spot for television correspondent Nitzan Horwitz, as well as the seventh, ninth and twelfth places.

The merger pushed Arab Meretz member Isawi Freji down on the list of candidates, and he has vowed to fight against the deal.

Platform: "The State of Israel is the state of the Jewish people and of all its citizens." It favors surrendering virtually all of Judea and Samaria to the Palestinian Authority.
 
"A welfare state is the instrument through which we will work to attain social justice by improving the lot of working people and guaranteeing them extensive social services.    

"We will struggle against discrimination on national grounds and for coexistence and equal rights between Jews and Arabs through 'affirmative action'…. We will struggle for freedom of religion and freedom from religion and for striking from Israeli law all marriage and divorce legislation based on religion, out of respect for those who believe in the principle of 'live and let live.'"

It also favors allowing conscientious objectors not to serve in the IDF and backs reducing compulsory service to two years instead of the present three.

Meretz also supports changing the sate calendar to include Muslim, Druze and Christian holidays and backs preferential discrimination in granting public services. It also calls for a total separation of religions and government, environmental measures and a war against drug use.

Chairman Chaim Oron, co-founder of Peace Now in 1978, has been a Knesset Member since the 12th Knesset and was Minister of Agriculture in the 16th Knesset. He is a member of the lobby for Bedouin rights. MK Oron is 68, a member of Kibbutz Lahav in the northern Negev and is married with four children.

Candidates: 

MK Chaim Oron
Former MK Ilan Gilon
Nitzan Horowitz, television correspondent
MK Zahava Gal-On
Mosi Raz, former head of Peace Now
MK Avshalom Vilan
Talia Sasson, author of the government report against Yesha communities
MK Dr. Tzvia Greenfeld
Tzali Reshef
Isawi Freij

About National Democratic Assembly (Balad)

National Democratic Assembly (Balad) now has three seats in the Knesset.

The Balad party is an Arab political party whose platform is the “struggle to transform the state of Israel into a democracy for all its citizens, irrespective of national or ethnic identity.” The party advocates two separate states for Jews and Arabs, and the right of immigration to Israel for millions of descendants of Arabs who left Israel in the War of Independence in 1947-48 and the Six-Day War in 1967.

The party was created in 1995 and was headed by Azmi Bishara until he fled the country and resigned from the Knesset in April 2008 following a police investigation on his giving Hizbullah information of strategic importance during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Bishara’s Israeli citizenship was revoked by the Israeli government in November and he is no longer entitled to a pension as a former Knesset member.

Chairman: MK Jamal Zahalka has replaced Bishara as chairman and his holding negotiations with the Ra'am-Ta'al party on a possible merger.

Candidates: The party's list of candidates is dependent on the outcome of merger talks with Ra'am-Ta'al. Balad's current MKs are chairman Zahalka, Said Naffaa and Wasil Taha.

About National Union-HaTikva

HaTikva has no seats in the current Knesset. The former National Union factions held nine seats in the current Knesset.

Knesset Member Prof. Aryeh Eldad founded the HaTikva party several weeks ago after the former National Union party disbanded into the new religious-based Jewish Home party. He refused to join because he felt there was no room for secular nationalists like himself. Disagreements in Jewish Home ended with MK Uri Ariel taking his Tekuma faction of the National Union party out of Jewish Home and into the HaTikva party.

Former Jewish Front leader Baruch Marzel and Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe, who joined together to found the Our Land of Israel party, have joined forces with HaTikva.

The HaTikva party platform states, "the Land of Israel is the Jewish people's national home [and] belongs to the people of Israel in accordance with the Torah and international law. HaTikva will strive to strengthen Israel as a Jewish-democratic country and to renew its Zionist nature.

"HaTikva categorically opposes the creation of another national entity besides Israel anywhere in the Land of Israel west of the Jordan River [and] will strive to implement Israel's sovereignty on the Temple Mount and Jews' right to pray on the Mount, as a symbol of the Israeli nation's sovereignty in the Land of Israel.

The party supports the renewal of mass Aliyah and supports making a citizen's right to vote "conditional on fulfillment of the duty of military or national service, regardless of religion, sector, sex and ethnic background" and the citizen's "pledge of allegiance to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, the land of the Jewish people."

HaTikva "offers a plan for a regional solution of the Arab refugee problem and their resettlement in Arab states and immigrant-absorbing states." Its platform also states, "HaTikva will strive towards the establishment of balanced media channels that will give proper expression to the variety of opinions in the Israeli public."

Chairman Ya'akov "Ketzaleh" Katz emerged as one of the top visionaries and leaders in the development of Judea and Samaria in the 1970s and 1980s. He is a co-founder of the town of Beit El, the 10th-largest in Judea and Samaria, and together with Rabbi Zalman Melamed, founded the prominent Yeshivat Beit El network of educational institutions.

Katzaleh served in the elite Shaked commando unit in the Yom Kippur War and was seriously wounded when the unit held off vastly superior Egyptian commando forces at the beginning of the fighting. He was taken for dead by fellow soldiers, but at the personal insistence of his commander, Maj.-Gen. Ariel Sharon, he was flown to a hospital and regained consciousness. He spent the next year recovering in the hospital, where he also met his future wife Tami, who was volunteering there as a nurse.

He is the Executive Director of the Beit El Yeshiva Center Institutions and Arutz-Sheva/Israel National News.

MK Eldad is a former leader of the underground group Lehi. He is a professor and head of the plastic surgery and burns unit at the Hadassah Medical Center hospital in Jerusalem and served as the chief medical officer and was the senior commander of the Israeli Defense Forces medical corps for 25 years, reaching the rank of Brigadier General.

Prior to the scheduled Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria in August 2005, Eldad was the only MK to call for non-violent civil disobedience as a tactic in the struggle against the government. In the February 2006 destruction of homes at Amona in Samaria, he was injured by police.

Candidates:
Ya'akov Ketzaleh Katz
MK Uri Ariel
MK Aryeh Eldad
Dr. Michael Ben-Ari of the Jewish Front-Our Land of Israel Party
Uri Bank, of the Moledet faction and a North American immigrant
Alon Davidi, of Sderot
Avi Rath, media personality and educator
Dr. Ron Breiman, chairman of Professors for a Strong Israel

About Pensioners (Gil)

The Pensioners Party (Gil) now has six seats in the Knesset.

The Pensioners Party achieved surprising results in the last election and originally won seven mandates, but the faction fell into disarray amid internal squabbling and criticism from supporters for not fulfilling election promises. The party splintered into two factions, and some of the dissenters rejoined the original party.

Pre-election polls show that the original party, headed by MK Rafi Eitan, has not been able at win the minimal support needed to place representatives in the Knesset.

In a bid to boost popularity, it has attracted Gidon Reicher of Voice of Israel government radio. He said he wants to concentrate on attracting young voters, who he believes are fed up with other parties. Much of the party's support in the last election came from youth, and Reicher says the party will fight for better housing for them as well as for pensioners.

Platform: Commitment to protecting pension rights, including housing, raising the amount of national health insurance and services for pensioners, protection of traditional Jewish values and advancement of democratic values.
 
Chairman Rafi Eitan is a former head of the Mossad and was the "handler" for Jonathan Pollard, who is serving a life sentence in the United States for handing over classified documents to Israel.
 
Candidates:

Rafi Eitan
Ephraim Lapid, former IDF spokesman
Sando Mazur
Shomrit Or
Former MK Yossi Katz
Dr. Yoram Belsher, former head of doctors' union
Alex Orly, head of the group of orphaned children of the Holocaust
Moshe Zenver, former Governor of Bank of Israel

About Shas

Shas now has 12 seats in the Knesset.

The Shas party is comprised primarily of religious Jews from the "Mizrachi," or Middle Eastern sector and is guided by a Council of Sages, which is led by the party’s spiritual leader and former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. The party’s platform is geared toward strengthening social supports for Jewish families and Jewish education in the schools. According to the Shas platform, Israel is a Jewish State and should be preserved as such and the issue of Jewish identity should remain paramount in policy decisions.

Every issue faced by the State of Israel has an answer in the Torah and Jewish law, according to the Shas doctrine. Ultimately Rabbi Ovadia Yosef determines the party’s position on any given issue, including the status of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

Chairman Industry Trade and Labor Minister Eli Yishai began his career in 1987 as a Jerusalem City Council Member. His first term in the Knesset began in 1996, when he was also appointed Minister of Labor and Social Services in the Netanyahu administration. He continued in the same position in 1999, during the tenure of Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Yishai became Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister in a new national unity government when Ariel Sharon won the prime ministerial elections in 2001.

When the party’s founding chairman, Aryeh Deri, was convicted on corruption charges in 1999, Eli Yishai became the new leader of the party. He was appointed as Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor, as well as Deputy Prime Minister, when Kadima took control under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2006.

He is 46 years old, married and father of seven children.

Candidates: Shas has not yet chosen it candidates for the up,cng electins, in which Rabbi Yosef said theparty can win up to 20 seats. It now has 12 Knesset Members:

Chaim Amsellem      
Ariel Atias               
David Azoulay
Mazor Bahyna
Amnon Cohen
Yitzchak Cohen
Yaakov Margi
Avraham Michaeli
Meshulam Nahari
Yitzchak Vaknin
Eliyahu Yishai
Nissim Zeev

About Ta'al (Ra'am-Ta'al) United Arab List

Ta'al (Ra'am-Ta'al) now has 4 Knesset seats.
 
Ta'al (Ra'am-Ta'al) is known as the Arab Movement for Renewal Party, it is an Arab nationalist party that seeks the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state and its reformation as a "state of all its citizens." The party began as a single-member parliamentary group that was formed by MK Ahmed Tibi during the fifteenth Knesset (1999-2003), when he split from the Arab nationalist Balad party headed by former MK Azmi Bishara.

The AMC sees itself as part of the larger Arab political sphere in the Middle East and therefore promotes "human and civil rights, democracy and freedom of movement and political action based on the principle of respect for opposing opinions" in the "entire Arab world." 

The AMC platform promotes the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, alongside the State of Israel as it was constituted before June 1967. It also seeks the influx into Israel of Arabs defined as "refugees" from the wars with Israel. The party calls for full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights to the borders of June 1967 and the signing of a peace agreement with Syria, but only as part of a comprehensive peace in the region.

The AMC advocates the establishment of an Arab education system under the Ministry of Education "that reflects the reality, identity and history of the Palestinian Arab masses in Israel."

The party also promotes "the abolition of property tax and the recognition of the unrecognized [Bedouin] villages," as well as undefined "radical solutions to the issues of the Negev Arabs and Arabs in mixed cities."

Chairman Ahmed Tibi, a Hebrew University-educated doctor of gynecology by training, and was a political advisor to PLO leader and terrorist Yasser Arafat before his election to the Knesset in 1999 as a member of the Balad party. He ran for the Israeli Knesset as a member of the Balad party. MK Tibi is currently a Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and has served on a wide variety of parliamentary committees.

In 2003, he was charged with supporting terrorism and tarnishing the reputation of Israel in the world media. However, the court rejected the attempt to bar him from running.

He was also a member of the board of directors of B'Tselem between the years 1988-1983. MK Tibi is a resident of the Arab city of Taybe, between Kfar Saba and Netanya.

Candidates: It has not yet chosen its list of candidates. Current MKs are 
Talab El-Sana, Ibrahim Sarsur, Ahmed Tibi and Abas Zkoor 

About United Torah Judaism (UTJ)

United Torah Judaism (UTJ) now has six seats in the Knesset.

The United Torah Judaism-UTJ includes the Agudat Yisrael and Degel HaTorah factions. Agudat Yisrael, the elder and more Hassidic of the two, was established in 1912 in Europe "to mobilize Torah-loyal Jews for the perpetuation of authentic Judaism." It grew during the 1920s and 1930s to be the political, communal, and cultural voice of what became known as "hareidi" religious Jews - the majority of Orthodox Jews who were not affiliated with the religious-Zionist sector. Lubavitch and Satmar are not part of Agudat Yisrael.

In the early 1980's, Shas broke off from Agudat Yisrael as a Sephardic-hareidi party, and a few years later, Degel HaTorah was formed as a non-Hassidic Ashkenazi hareidi party.

Agudah, as Agudat Yisrael was known, was represented in all of the Knessets, either as an independent party or as part of a larger unified religious bloc. Degel ran on its own for the 12th Knesset (1988), but in the 13th through 16th Knessets, the two re-united as the United Torah Judaism party. Prior to the elections of the 14th, 15th and 17th Knessets, they separated into their two parties for administrative purposes.

UTJ often takes part in parliamentary government coalitions, but does not assume ministerial positions in protest of the irreligious character of the State. Its members have served as deputy ministers but essentially had the same powers as full-fledged ministers.

The party platform is to make Torah sovereign in every affair, and its positions on issues are largely determined by its leading rabbinical figures.

In the past, Agudat Yisrael, one of the two factions of UTJ, was not clearly identified on the right-left political spectrum, but since the beginning of the Oslo process in the early 1990's, it has become more identified with nationalistic positions. Despite this, it joined the Sharon government just a few months before the implementation of the government program to destroy Jewish communities in the Gaza and northern Samaria regions.

A chairman as such does not exist. MK Avraham Ravitz has served as head of the Degel HaTorah faction. He recently said he is quitting politics but will continue to lead the faction. He also has said that the faction may split away from UTJ.

Candidates have not yet been announced. The current MKs are  Moshe Gafni, Shmuel Halpert, Yakov Litzman, Uri Maklev, Meir Porush and Avraham Ravitz.