Gil (political party)

Gil (, lit. Age, but also an acronym for Gimla'ey Yisrael LaKnesset (Hebrew: גימלאי ישראל לכנסת), lit. Pensioners of Israel to the Knesset) is a political party in Israel and was part of the governing coalition in the seventeenth Knesset. In the 2009 elections, Gil did not receive sufficient votes for representation in the Knesset.

Background

The party has been in existence in some form since the 1990s. It ran in the 1996 elections under the name Pensioners of Israel (, Gimla'ey Israel), led by former Labour MK Nava Arad and including modern-day Gil MK Moshe Sharoni on its list. However, the party failed to cross the electoral threshold and did not win a seat. It did not contest the 1999 or January 2003 elections, though an unrelated party, Power for Pensioners did run in the 1999 elections, failing to win a seat. Later in 2003, Power for Pensioners won a surprise victory in the municipal elections in Tel Aviv, defeating the party of mayor Ron Huldai.

The party announced that it would compete in the 2006 elections, and although opinion polls suggested that it might break the 2% threshold, it was not considered a serious contender for a significant number of seats. However, the party was the surprise package of the elections, and managed to win almost 186,000 votes and seven seats.

Much of the party's support came in the way of a protest vote amongst the young, particularly in Tel Aviv where nearly one in ten voters voted...
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