1999 Israeli general election

1999 Israeli general election
17 May 1999
Prime ministerial election
← 1996
2001 →
Turnout78.71%
 
Candidate Ehud Barak Benjamin Netanyahu
Party One Israel Likud
Popular vote 1,791,020 1,402,474
Percentage 56.08% 43.92%
Prime Minister before election

Benjamin Netanyahu
Likud

Prime Minister after election

Ehud Barak
One Israel

Knesset election
← 1996
2003 →
Party Leader Vote % Seats +/–
One Israel Ehud Barak 20.26 26 −11
Likud Benjamin Netanyahu 14.14 19 −8
Shas Aryeh Deri 13.01 17 +7
Meretz Yossi Sarid 7.66 10 +1
Yisrael BaAliyah Natan Sharansky 5.19 6 −1
Shinui Yosef Lapid 5.07 6 New
Centre Party Yitzhak Mordechai 5.00 6 New
Mafdal Yitzhak Levi 4.24 5 −4
UTJ Meir Porush 3.80 5 +1
Ra'am Abdulmalik Dehamshe 3.47 5 −1
National Union Benny Begin 3.03 4 New
Hadash Mohammad Barakeh 2.63 3 −1
Yisrael Beiteinu Avigdor Lieberman 2.60 4 New
Balad Azmi Bishara 2.00 2 +1
One Nation Amir Peretz 1.94 2 New
This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.
Speaker of the Knesset before Speaker of the Knesset after
Dan Tichon
Likud		 Avraham Burg
One Israel

Early general elections for both the Prime Minister and the Knesset were held in Israel on 17 May 1999 following a vote of no confidence in the government; the incumbent Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ran for re-election.

This election was only the second time in Israeli history an election had been held for the Prime Minister's post in addition to elections for the Knesset. The first such election, in 1996 had been an extremely tight contest between Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu on the right, and Labor's Shimon Peres on the left; the right had won by less than one percent (about 29,000 votes).

Ehud Barak, promising peace talks and withdrawal from Lebanon by July 2000,[1][2] won the election.

  1. ^ Barak calls early election The Guardian, 29 November 2000
  2. ^ Israel's Withdrawal from Lebanon Archived 2010-10-16 at the Wayback Machine ADL