LIKUD

in full Likud-liberalim Leumi (Hebrew: "Unity-National Liberals) Israeli right-wing political party bloc. It was founded in September 1973 to challenge the Labour Alignment (headed by the Israel Labour Party) and first came to power in 1977, with Menachem Begin as prime minister. Thereafter, it opposed the Israel Labour Party in essentially a two-party system, but it depended on coalitions with minor parties, especially those of a religious ultraconservative or nationalist persuasion. The major component of the Likud coalition beginning in 1973 was the Gahal bloc, which consisted of the Herut (Freedom) party and the Liberal Party (Miflaget ha-Liberali). The Herut had its roots in the Russian Jewish Zionism of the 1920s and '30s and was formally organized in the year of Israel's independence (1948) in the merger of such preindependence groups as the Irgun Zvai Leumi, some of them deemed terrorist groups by the British authorities. Begin, a Polish-born Jew, had been leader of the Irgun. The other member of the Gahal bloc, the Liberal Party, was formed in 1961 in the merger of the General Zionist Party (which was active from 1948 to 1961) and the smaller Progressive Party. Staunchly Zionist, it advocated retention of all territories conquered by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. The other partners in Likud were relatively small, though often influential because of the incremental weight that they added to the balance of power. During his prime ministry (197783) Begin signed a peace treaty with Egypt and launched a controversial invasion of Lebanon. In 1983 he was succeeded as prime minister and party leader by Yitzhak Shamir, who governed in coalition with the Israel Labour Party from 1984 to 1990. Likud's administration ended after elections in 1992, and in 1993 Shamir was succeeded as party leader by Benjamin Netanyahu, who led the Likud coalition back to power in 1996. The Likud's stance toward the Israel-PLO accords (1993) was equivocal.