Labor and Meretz Merge to Form “The Democrats”—Consequences and Implications

The Labor and Meretz parties recently announced their intention to merge. Though these are relatively small parties today—Meretz has no representation at all in the current Knesset, and Labor has just four seats—this is still a significant event from a historical perspective and within the Zionist left.

Yair Golan, MK Naama Lazimi and MK Gilad Kariv. Photo by Tomer Neubrg/Flash90

Not technically an electoral bloc, but a full merger

According to the statements from both parties, the intention is to complete a full merger. That is, they intend not merely to form a joint electoral list (known as a “technical bloc,” which can be rapidly dissolved after the elections), but to establish a new unified party called “The Democrats.” However, as explained below, and due to financial necessities, it appears that this merger will still take the form of a joint list at the next elections, and that the unification will only be completed afterward.

It is a fairly common occurrence in Israeli politics for independent parties to stand together in joint electoral lists. At the last elections, the joint lists elected to the Knesset were: Hadash-Ta’al; United Torah Judaism, which has comprised Agudat Yisrael and Degel Hatorah since 1992; and two lists that have since broken up—National Unity, comprising Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party and Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope party; and Religious Zionism, which included Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party (officially called National Union-Tkuma), Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party, and Avi Maoz’s Noam party.

In contrast, a full unification of two parties has been uncommon in recent decades. In August 2023, two parties on the other side of the political map, the Religious Zionism (formally, National Union-Tkuma) and Jewish Home parties announced their intention to merge. But as of the end of June 2024, this merger had yet to take place, and each party still appears separately on the website of the Parties Registrar.

The most recent prominent mergers happened around 20 years ago. One was the merger that formed Meretz: the Ratz, Mapam, and Shinui parties stood together as a joint list at the 1992 and 1996 elections, and subsequently announced their unification, though some members of Shinui opposed the merger and stood independently at the next elections. Ratz and Mapam, despite announcing their unification, continued formally to be separate parties standing for election on a joint list, and finally merged only after the 2003 elections. Another merger during the same period occurred when the Yisrael Be’Aliya party headed by Natan Sharansky, which was elected to the Knesset in three elections (1996, 1999, and 2003), was merged into the Likud party after the 2003 elections, when it won just two seats.

In the more distant past, there were much more significant mergers that helped shape Israeli politics—those that created the Likud and Labor parties. The two most prominent parties in the center-right bloc, Herut and the Liberal party (which itself was the result of an earlier merger between the General Zionists and the Progressive party), stood as a joint list at the 1965 elections. From the 1973 elections onward, when they were joined by other groups, this joint list was called the Likud. But only ahead of the 1988 elections did the parties formally merge into a single party. On the left side of the political spectrum, Mapai and Ahdut HaAvoda stood together as a joint list at the 1965 elections, called the (“small”) Alignment. In 1968, the two parties merged, together with Rafi, to form the Labor party.

The reason for the current merger between Labor and Meretz, as with earlier mergers between parties, derives from a combination of electoral and ideological factors. Electorally speaking, the last elections showed that it is highly doubtful that that there is room for two separate parties on the Zionist left, in the space between Yesh Atid and the Arab parties. The “trauma” inflicted by Meretz’s failure to pass the electoral threshold, which made it easier for the current Netanyahu government to be formed, has been the main catalyst for unification.

From an ideological perspective, the differences that existed between the two parties in the past—as a rule, Meretz has taken more “dovish” positions in terms of security and foreign policy issues and has been more focused on human and civil rights issues, feminism, and the environment, while Labor has had more defense establishment figures in its ranks, such as Rabin—have become increasingly blurred, certainly under Merav Michaeli’s leadership of Labor (though the unified party will actually be headed by Yair Golan, a former IDF general). Indeed, the two parties stood together at the 2020 elections, as part of the Labor-Gesher-Meretz joint list. But their ideological similarities were also evident in the distant past, during the period of Mapam and Ratz (the parties which, as noted, founded Meretz): Mapam and the Labor party stood together as a joint list, the (“big”) Alignment, at elections between 1969 and 1984, while Ratz was founded when Shulamit Aloni left the Labor party in 1973.

How will the merger be carried out?

Even with the best will between the two parties, the merger between them is not a simple matter and it poses several challenges and difficulties.

First of all, according to the statements by the parties, the unification agreement will be submitted for approval to their respective governing institutions—the Meretz Convention and the Labor Convention. This latter body was elected just last week, and comprises around 1,000 delegates.

Subsequently, at the next Knesset elections, there will be a single list of candidates. This list will be selected at primaries to be held among the members of the new party, to include the combined membership of the two parties as well as new members. Due to the relative size of the parties’ memberships and the danger that Meretz candidates will be sidelined after the primaries—ahead of the 2022 elections, Meretz had around 19,000 members, while Labor now has around 52,000—it was decided that at the next elections, four places on the list (up to the 20^th place) will reserved for former members of Meretz (slots number 4, 8, 12, and 16). This arrangement will only hold for the next Knesset elections. In addition, party head Yair Golan (no mention was made in the announcements of the possibility of additional primaries for the head of the unified party before the elections) will be able to place his own chosen candidates in slots 2 and 11 on the list.

As mentioned, due to financial necessities, the merger will take the form of a joint list at the next elections: The majority of the MKs will officially represent the Democrats party (or possibly Labor—this has yet to be clarified), while one MK will represent Meretz. The background to this arrangement is the large financial debt to the Knesset owed by both parties in the wake of the last elections—NIS 11 million by Labor, and NIS 16 million by Meretz. The Labor party, at least, is represented in the Knesset and thus receives regular monthly party funding, which it is using to repay its debts. Meretz, on the other hand, does not receive such funding. To Meretz’s credit, and in contrast to other parties that incurred similar debts and were not elected, the party strove to reach an arrangement that would allow it to repay its debts. In December 2023, the party reached an agreement with the Knesset for repayment of these debts, using a proportion of the donations it receives up to the next Knesset elections, as well as the public funding it will receive if it is elected at those elections. According to the agreement that looks like being reached between Labor and Meretz, the list elected to the next Knesset will have one MK who will formally represent Meretz, which will secure its regular party funding and enable it to pay off its debts. It would appear that only after Meretz has repaid its debt will the two parties formally merge.

The merger will also include the establishment of a single party convention, in which former Meretz members will be guaranteed 25% representation. At the municipal level, too, the two parties’ factions in local authority councils will become affiliated with the unified party (in fact, from a legal perspective, only Labor had affiliate factions or lists at the recent local elections, as parties without representation in the Knesset, such as Meretz, cannot have affiliate factions or lists standing in local elections).