Former Meretz Party leader and Minister Yossi Sarid resigned from political life in late 2005, about three months before the elections that resulted in Ehud Olmert forming a government.
It was the culmination of a process that took place in stages. Two years earlier, Sarid had assumed responsibility for Meretz’s failure in the elections that year and resigned from the party’s leadership. In those elections, this important party on the left dropped from 10 Knesset seats to just six. The Camp David meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2000 had just ended in failure, and the second intifada was raging. Buses were exploding in the streets of Israel’s cities, and the public, despairing of the peace process with the Palestinians, handed the government to Ariel Sharon and the Likud Party.