28 October 1969 1973 → 46.2% 56 Gahal Menachem Begin Start date 1969 | Alignment Golda Meir 56 -7 21.7% 26 | |
Elections for the seventh Knesset were held in Israel on 28 October 1969. Voter turnout was 81.7%.
Contents
Results
¹ Meir Avizohar defected from the National List to the Alignment
² Avner Shaki left the National Religious Party and remained a single MK
³ Shalom Cohen left HaOlam HaZeh – Koah Hadash, which was renamed Meri
The election
The 1969 election is notable for the fact that the Alignment coalition was returned to power with the largest number of seats ever won in an Israeli election (56 out of 120). It is also the only time a party or electoral alliance has even approached winning a majority in an election. This can be attributed to the government's popularity following the country's victory in the Six Day War, and that the Alignment had been formed by an alliance of the four most popular left-wing parties who between them had taken 51.2% of the vote in the previous election.
It was also the last election with such a decisive majority for the left-wing in Israel, as the disastrous Yom Kippur War shortly before the next elections seriously damaged the Alignment's credibility, with its margin over Likud (the largest right-wing grouping) reduced to only 12 seats.
The Seventh Knesset
Golda Meir of the Alignment formed the fifteenth government, a national unity government including Gahal, the National Religious Party, the Independent Liberals, Progress and Development and Cooperation and Brotherhood. There were 24 ministers.
Gahal resigned from the coalition on 6 August 1970 after the government had decided to adopt the Rogers Plan.
The seventh Knesset was one of the most stable, with only one new party created (and that itself was virtually a rename of an existing party) and four MKs changing parties.