# Likud Israel's principal party of the right, formed in **1973** as an alliance of Menachem Begin's Herut with the Liberals and smaller factions, and the governing party for most of the period since 1977. Its ideological inheritance is [[Revisionist Zionism]]; its dominant figure for three decades has been [[Benjamin Netanyahu]]. ## The line Herut was founded by Begin in 1948 out of the Irgun and spent its first two decades outside respectable politics — David Ben-Gurion refused for years to name Begin in the Knesset. Gahal (1965) and then Likud (1973) were the mergers that made the tradition electable. **17 May 1977** is the hinge: Likud won 43 seats and Begin formed a government, ending 29 years of unbroken Labour rule. Israelis call it the *Mahapakh*, the upheaval. The causes were the 1973 Yom Kippur War's destruction of the establishment's competence claim, the mobilisation of Mizrahi voters who had been absorbed into the bottom tier of a European-founded state, and the ordinary corrosion of a very long incumbency. Since 1977 Likud has led most Israeli governments. Its prime ministers: Begin (1977–83), Yitzhak Shamir (1983–84, 1986–92), Netanyahu (1996–99, 2009–21, 2022– ), Ariel Sharon (2001–05, before leaving to found Kadima). ## What it actually believes, and how that changed Begin's Likud was territorially maximalist and constitutionally liberal — and it returned Sinai to Egypt at the [[Camp David Accords]] for a peace that has held nearly fifty years. Netanyahu's Likud is economically liberalising, security-maximalist, hostile to the Supreme Court's power of review, and — since 2022 — willing to seat coalition partners from the religious-Zionist right and from [[Kahanism]] that Begin's party would not have seated. > [!important] ⭐ The finding: the change is in who Likud will sit with, not in what Likud says > Likud's own platform language is recognisably continuous from 1977. **What changed is the coalition market.** In a 120-seat chamber with a 3.25% threshold and no other majoritarian device, a party at 22–32 seats needs partners whose price is portfolios, and the partners with the highest price-to-seat ratio are the smallest and most ideological. This is the mechanism by which a mainstream right-wing party ends up delivering the programme of a fringe it does not share — and it is a mechanism, not a betrayal, which is why it recurs. See [[Kahanism]] and [[Israeli History Hub]] §4. ## Status, August 2026 The Knesset dissolved on **17 July 2026** — the first to serve a full term since 1988 — with elections set for **27 October 2026**. July polling put Likud at **22 seats**, behind Gadi Eizenkot's new Yashar list at 23, with the pro-Netanyahu bloc around 51 against roughly 59 for the opposition and 10 for Arab parties that both blocs refuse as partners. Netanyahu's corruption trial moved past his own testimony in **June 2026** after 98 hearings. ## See Also - [[Benjamin Netanyahu]] · [[Yair Lapid]] · [[Itamar Ben-Gvir]] - [[Israeli History Hub]] · [[Revisionist Zionism]] · [[Zionism]] · [[Kahanism]] - [[Israel]] · [[Camp David Accords]] · [[Oslo Accords]] · [[Six-Day War]] · [[Gaza War]] · [[Abraham Accords]]