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.

At the time, it was obvious to Sarid that the real responsibility for the disintegration of Meretz and the Israeli left lay with the then-head of the Palestinian Authority Yasser Arafat. He had rejected Barak’s far-reaching diplomatic proposals and subsequently orchestrated the second intifada.

Sarid was decisive and unequivocal, as he was predisposed to be. He took responsibility for his party’s defeat in the elections because, as he said, failure “cannot be an orphan.” Upon meeting with the Meretz Party’s stunned leadership after his resignation, he chastised himself not only for failing to dissociate himself from Arafat, but also for not doing it “firmly enough and at the right time.” In retrospect, this mistake was a severe blow to Meretz. “It is now obvious that it was a mistake. We have to listen to what the people are telling us. They are saying, ‘You are okay. You are honest and fair, but …’” Regardless of the situation, however, Sarid also insisted that Israel should pack up, withdraw to the 1967 borders and defend itself from there.