“It was last Yom Kippur, five months after I left the Knesset. While spending the fast with my family, I told my children that I was being called to the flag. The Israeli public was heading to elections, and so many people felt like me that the country was in decline, that there was no alternative to the prime minister either individually or ideologically, and that there was no one to represent our positions to the issues most critical to Israel’s future. Then I asked them what they thought. ‘Fight,’ they said. ‘Fight for us.’ Well, I’m here to fight.”
That was how Justice Minister Tzipi Livni began her comeback speech, when she announced the creation of the Hatnua Party on Nov. 27, 2012, about half a year after resigning from politics upon losing the Kadima Party leadership to Knesset member and former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. During her speech, members of the Labor Party were demonstrating outside the hall. They accused Livni of splitting the center-left bloc unnecessarily by creating a new party instead of joining an existing one.