The party was formed by dissidents in Kadima, which Livni, who had led the party's progressive wing,[24] headed until March 2012 when she lost a leadership primary election to rival Shaul Mofaz,[1] who was part of the party's more conservative wing.[25][26][27] The party was based on the infrastructure of Hetz, a faction that broke away from Shinui in 2006.[28] Relatively close in ideology to Yesh Atid and the Labor Party, which focused mostly on domestic and socioeconomic issues in their 2013 campaigns, Hatnua stood out for its aggressive push for a pragmatic peace settlement with the Palestinians.[29]
In the 2013 legislative election, Hatnua ran on a joint list with the Green Movement, and incorporated many of its core ideals into the party's platform.[30] Hatnua's 2013 platform emphasized Arab–Israeli peace, social justice, environmental protection, the integration of all citizens into the military and workforce, and religious pluralism.[31]
In the 2015 legislative election, it ran on a joint electoral list with the Labor Party called the Zionist Union, which became the second-largest parliamentary group. In January 2019, Labor chairman Avi Gabay announced that Labor would not run with Hatnua in the April 2019 election.[32] Following several weeks of poor poll results, Livni announced on 18 February 2019 that Hatnua would drop out of the election and that she was retiring from politics.[33]
^"Tzipi Livni, subalterna de Herzog para no desaparecer del mapa político israelí", ABC, 16 March 2015. "Desde entonces, Livni se ha visto despojada del liderazgo del Kadima, creó una nueva formación de corte liberal -Hatnuá- con la que ganó sólo seis escaños en los comicios de 2013, y ha visto languidecer su otrora prometedor horizonte político hasta tal punto que, para salvarse, ha preferido la unión con el Laborismo, partido del que ideológicamente ha estado siempre alejada."
^"Israel". European Forum for Democracy and Solidarity. 25 August 2014. Archived from the original on 15 January 2015. Retrieved 28 January 2015. The party is a liberal party that Israel did not had since 2006.
^Sophie Desjardin (13 March 2015). "Livni and Herzog merge in Zionist Union to oust Netanyahu". Euronews. She quit the traditional Likud party of the right to join the Kadima centrists before she formed the liberal Hatnuah party. He's a socialist. Together, they head the centre-left Zionist Union, with a mantra 'to defend a Jewish and democratic state'.
^See also the political compasses made for the 2013 elections by Haaretz (Archived 15 February 2013 at the Wayback Machine) and Kieskompas (Archived 5 March 2013 at the Wayback Machine) (in collaboration with the Israel Democracy Institute and The Jerusalem Post), both of which placed Hatnua led by Tzipi Livni to the left of Kadima led by Mofaz. This was the case in Kieskompas on both the vertical axis (factoring positions on Peace and Territories, Security and Terror, and Religion and State) and horizontal axis (Economy and Welfare, Civil and Human Rights, and Law and Governability), as well as Haaretz on both the vertical axis (Secular versus Religious) and horizontal axis (Left versus Right).