The party was founded by famous General
Rafael "Raful" Eitan in 1983, after his retirement from the position of chief-of-staff in 1982. He headed it throughout its existence, and modeled it in his spirit as a secular, right-wing party with a strong agricultural side. Many of Tzomet's members and MKs were neighbors of Eitan in
Tel Adashim (a small
moshav). Tzomet ran for the
1984 elections in a joint list with the
Tehiya party, and Eitan was its only member of the
Knesset. In 1986, Tzomet briefly disbanded and folded into Tehiya. However, in 1987, Eitan's disagreements with the Tehiya leader
Geulah Cohen came to a head, and he revitalised Tzomet as a party and a single-member faction. It ran the
1988 elections, winning two seats. The party joined
Yitzhak Shamir's government in 1990, and Eitan was appointed
Minister of Agriculture. However, the party left the coalition in December 1991 in protest at Shamir's participation in the
Madrid Conference. In the
1992 elections, Tzomet rode a wave of secularist sentiment, parallel to the new left-wing secularist
Meretz, gaining the support of many young Israelis, leading to a surprising result of eight seats. The party also benefitted from the misfortunes of other right-wing parties. Likudniks who were angered with the Madrid Conference switched to Tzomet. Despite polls up to election week predicting it would maintain its three seats, Tehiya surprisingly fell below the threshold and lost all their seats. When
Yitzhak Rabin's
Labor Party won the election, Tzomet was hopeful to join a new coalition. Despite being right-wing on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Tzomet agreed with Rabin's privatisation plan, and agreed with Meretz on separating religion and the state. Eitan and Tzomet officials sent a delegation to negotiate a coalition with Labor. Due to Eitan's support for West Bank settlements, refusal of a Palestinian state, and a stricter security policy on the eve of the
Oslo Accords, coalition talks broke down, and Tzomet found itself in the opposition again. The party's surprising success was also its downfall. None of the new MKs had any political experience, their ideologies strayed away from their leader, and most were completely unknown. Due to Raful's position in his party, the party was jokingly described as "Raful and the
seven dwarfs". Allegations of tyrannical behavior by Raful were raised, and in February 1992, three members:
Gonen Segev,
Esther Salmovitz, and
Alex Goldfarb—left and founded the
Yiud party (which then also splintered into
Atid). The three left the party because Segev was offered the position of Minister of Energy by
Yitzhak Rabin if he voted in favour of the
Oslo Accords, which Tzomet opposed, and which would not have passed without his vote. The splintering and infighting reduced the popularity of the party, despite this, ahead of the
1996 elections, Eitan became known as a potential candidate for PM. In the end Tzomet chose to run in a joint list with the
Likud and
Gesher under the name "
National Camp List". Tzomet was ensured several relatively high places in the combined list, partly as a reward for the withdrawal of Eitan as prime minister candidate, as the Likud feared that he would act as a spoiler for their candidate,
Benjamin Netanyahu. The 1996 elections were the first Israeli elections to feature a double vote: one for the Knesset, and one
direct vote for the prime minister. As part of the joint list, Tzomet managed to get all five of its Knesset members back into the Knesset. However, over the course of the next few years, Tzomet continued to splinter:
Pini Badash left to run in municipal politics,
Moshe Peled broke away to form his own
Mekhora faction before joining
Moledet while
Eliezer Sandberg left to form the
Centre Party. By the end of the 14th Knesset, Tzomet only had 2 MKs left: Eitan himself and
Haim Dayan. Following the dissolution of the Likud–Gesher–Tzomet alliance ahead of the
1999 elections, Tzomet was in the "political desert", it attempted to join the
National Union joint list or rejoin an alliance with the Likud, however both ventures failed and Tzomet ran alone for the Knesset. Over the years Tzomet had lost almost all its support, and won just 4,128 votes, less than 10% of the number needed to cross the 1.5%
electoral threshold. After the humiliating defeat, Eitan retired from political life. ==Moshe Gerin period (1999-2009); then dormant==