MK Chaim Ramon (Kadima) will be handing in a letter of resignation from the Knesset Tuesday. He will be leaving the Knesset 26 years after he first entered it as a Labor MK, but will not be leaving politics altogether: he will continue to serve as the head of the Kadima Council.
Ramon was considered the leader of a group of dovish Labor MKs known as “The Eight” (HaShminiyah). In 1992, then-Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin appointed him Health Minister. In that capacity, he was the driving force behind Israel’s National Health Insurance Law, which was passed in 1994.
He resigned as Health Minister to run for Head of the General Histadrut, Israel’s mammoth “union of unions.” As head of the General Histadrut he separated it from the industrial conglomerates, the health cooperatives and the pension funds it owned. These reforms reduced some of the Histadrut’s powers as well as its debts, leading the way to greater privatization and de-socialization of the national economy.
After the breakout of the Great Terror War in 2000, Ramon was a leading proponent and spokesman for the idea of the Separation Barrier / Security Fence and the formation of a super-party made up of Labor and Likud members (Kadima) to carry out the Disengagement.
In 2006 he became embroiled in scandal after he allegedly forcibly kissed a female soldier when he was on his way to the cabinet meeting that decided to launch the Second Lebanon War. He was found guilty of an indecent act, resigned from the government and served a community service sentence. He was then re-appointed to Ehud Olmert’s cabinet as Minister without Portfolio.