Operation Protective Edge put a sudden stop to the momentum that the Meretz Party had been enjoying since the last elections in January 2013. In the months leading up to the campaign, the left-wing party has managed to soar in the polls, which gave it as many as 12 seats. Not only would this have doubled the size of its Knesset delegation, which won six seats in the last election, but the number 12 itself has mythical symbolism in Meretz's history. It represents the party’s glory days, back in 1992, when it was headed by Shulamit Aloni. In the elections that year, the party won 12 seats and joined Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s government.

Ever since that record achievement, Meretz has shrunk considerably, losing its appeal and freshness, much like the rest of the Israeli left. In the 2009 elections, the party reached the low point of three seats. At the time, young people distanced themselves from it, and most of its voters and members were elderly. On the eve of the most recent elections, Meretz was about to vanish from the political landscape. Under the leadership of Zehava Gal-On, however, the party had a surprising recovery and walked away from the elections with a respectable outcome.

The revival of Meretz has turned the party into a lively arena for young people searching for a political home on the left. One such group, known as the “12-Big Left,” was founded a few months ago to recruit young members to Meretz, to give them more power in the party’s institutions and, eventually, to help them get elected to the Knesset. Its founders hope to restore the Israeli left to its glory days, when it had public support and influence, and to eliminate the stigma that Meretz has of being an elitist Ashkenazi (of Eastern European origin) party. The number 12 indicates how many seats they intend to win in the next elections. The “Group of 12” is part of a new phenomenon of reorganization, mostly by young people, who are committed to making the Zionist left more attractive, after seeing its public stature erode for so many years.

This reorganization effort in Meretz was gaining momentum throughout the country up until Operation Protective Edge. Its members were organizing conferences and political meetings all across the country. Then the war in Gaza erupted in July. First, the momentum stopped. Then, with the rise of the right, the trend turned negative. Wars are bad for the left, and especially for a party like Meretz, which opposed the operation almost from the outset, even though the operation had overwhelming public support. The electoral damage to the party was immediate. Meretz started to lose seats, dropping back down to six, the lowest it got in the polls ever since the elections.