Background In the
1973 Israel legislative election, the
Meri party, led by popular anti-establishment journalist
Uri Avnery of
HaOlam Hazeh fame, lost its representation in the Knesset. Avnery then decided to meticulously plan his return to the Knesset by writing a new manifesto, the "Plan for the State of Israel". In 1975, the
Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (ICIPP) was founded, which included former Major General of the Israel Defence Forces
Mattityahu Peled, left-wing economist and activist
Ya'akov Arnon, former
Mapam member , journalist
Amos Kenan, former secretary general of the
Israeli Labor Party,
Aryeh Eliav, and Uri Avnery While Avnery had been a longstanding critic of the Israeli establishment since the early 1950s, most of the ICIPP's founders—including Peled—were former members of the Israeli political and security establishment who had shifted toward more left-leaning positions in the early 1970s. In 1976, Peled and several other Israelis engaged in dialogue with senior PLO official
Issam Sartawi, who participated with the full authorization of PLO Chairman
Yasser Arafat. The initiation of this dialogue marked a notable shift in PLO policy, as the organization had previously maintained a position of engaging only with anti-Zionist Israelis. and former
Mapam and
Left Faction member
Yair Tzaban, and some members of the
Black Panthers, including
Saadia Marciano. Other prominent Sheli members included former Mapam MK
Ya'akov Riftin, journalist
Yael Lotan, singer
Yafa Yarkoni, and
Tayibe school headmaster (and another former Mapam member)
Walid Haj Yahia. Two other important Sheli members were
Gadi Yatziv, who would later briefly serve Mapam in the Knesset in 1988, and
Ruth Dayan, a renowned peace activist and ex-wife of famous Labor politician
Moshe Dayan.
Ofer Cassif, a later Hadash MK, joined Sheli in 1979 as a teenager. At the same time, Moked's rival
Rakah, which represented anti-Zionist communist viewpoints, merged with
Charlie Biton's faction of the Black Panthers, as well as
Aki, an organisation composed of Moked defectors, to create
Hadash, another left-wing political coalition, which was composed mostly of Arabs, as opposed to Sheli's predominantly Jewish membership. Although the admission of Ratz into Sheli was feasible, as the two shared similar views on the peace process, the presence of Moked, the heir of the old communist party, was enough to prevent Ratz leader
Shulamit Aloni (who was present in Ya'ad) from discussing a merger with Sheli. After a long and protracted struggle, although Marciano took Pa'il's seat in May, in November he broke away from the party to form a single-member faction, later established as
Equality in Israel – Panthers. Officially, Marciano stated that his reason for leaving Sheli was due to personal conflict with Avnery, who he accused of 'playing politics' and 'ignoring burning social problems'. On 19 May 1981, Marciano was joined in his new party by former
Dash MK,
Mordechai Elgrably. The new party was later renamed as the Unity Party. Yair Tzaban, who represented Sheli in the Executive Committee of the
Histadrut, had already returned to Mapam in 1980, sensing the tension within Sheli. In February 1981, Avnery resigned from the Knesset and gave his seat to Haj Yahia as scheduled. For the
1981 election, Pa'il led the party list, followed by Haj Yahia, Cohen, Peled and Lotan. During the election, its slogans were 'Let the true peace-fighters into the Knesset', and 'Rather than wasting your vote on
Peres or
The Change List, give it to Sheli'. Despite some high hopes placed for Sheli from across the political spectrum, and commentators predicting that it would win over former Mapam voters, the party failed to cross the
election threshold with Haj Yahia losing his seat. The Unity Party suffered the same fate.
Split and dissolution Within Sheli, the ICIPP group—led by Peled and Avnery—effectively became a faction in ongoing conflict with Ran Cohen's group. Tensions peaked during the
1982 Lebanon War. Peled publicly supported the stance of reserve soldiers who refused to serve in the war, as organized by the
Yesh Gvul movement. Around 200 of these refusers were imprisoned, and Peled’s endorsement attracted significant public attention due to his background as a senior military officer. Cohen, himself a reserve colonel, objected strongly to this position, asserting that soldiers were obligated to carry out orders even if they personally disagreed with the war. Cohen participated in the conflict as an artillery officer during the bombardment of Beirut. Meanwhile, Avnery crossed the front lines and met
Yasser Arafat on 3 July 1982, during the
Siege of Beirut—said to have been the first time an Israeli met personally with Arafat. He was tracked by an Israeli intelligence team which intended to kill Arafat, even if it meant killing Avnery at the same time once the latter had inadvertently led them to Arafat's hide-out. The operation, "Salt Fish", failed when the PLO managed to lose their trackers in the alleyways of Beirut. Cohen condemned the meeting, describing it as "fawning." In response, Peled accused Cohen of being "a war criminal who bombards a civilian population". In 1983, Peled led his faction, including Avnery and Arnon, out of Sheli to form the 'Alternativa' movement. Shortly after, Cohen led the rump Sheli, including
Binyamin Temkin, into
Ratz, in a one-to-three ratio agreement, dissolving Sheli in the process.
Aftermath In 1981, Tzaban was elected as an MK for the
Alignment, before pulling Mapam out of it in 1984 and becoming its final leader in 1988. Gadi Yatziv had already returned to Mapam in 1979, and briefly served in the Knesset in 1988. Haj Yahia followed them back to Mapam following Sheli's dissolution, but did not contest the 1988 election. Under Tzaban, Mapam's 1988 election campaign focused heavily on the peace process, a route that Ratz had also taken that year. The 'Alternativa' merged into the
Progressive List for Peace, a joint Jewish-Arab party that won two seats in the
1984 elections, with Peled taking one. Avnery served as the party chairman. In the same election, Cohen became an MK for Ratz. Eliav also ran in the election, but as an independent, and failed to win a seat. He then returned to the Labor Party, and in
1988, he returned to the Knesset, the same year Peled and Yatziv lost their seats. The Progressive List for Peace disintegrated in 1992 over the question of support for Iraq in the
Gulf War. Ratz and Mapam merged into
Meretz in the same year, with Haj Yahia, Temkin, Cohen and Tzaban all being elected into the Knesset and the latter two as government ministers from 1992 to 1996. Cohen served as a Meretz MK until 2009. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat signed the first of the
Oslo Accords in 1993 in order to commence a peace process, while Meretz was in Rabin's government. Uri Avnery founded the activist group
Gush Shalom in 1993, and in the 2000s supported Hadash. Ofer Cassif joined Hadash after being imprisoned for objecting to serve in the army during the
First Intifada. He became a Hadash MK in 2019, a position which he serves until the present. == Ideology ==