16th Knesset

Elections for the 16th Knesset

← 2001 (PM) ← 1999 (Knesset) 28 January 2003 2006 →

Party Leader % Seats ± Likud Ariel Sharon 29.39% 38 +19 Labor Amram Mitzna 14.46% 19 -7 Shinui Yosef Lapid 12.28% 15 +9 Shas Eli Yishai 8.22% 11 -6 National Union Avigdor Lieberman 5.52% 7 +3 Meretz Yossi Sarid 5.21% 6 -4 Mafdal Effi Eitam 4.20% 6 +1 United Torah Judaism Yaakov Litzman 4.29% 5 0 Hadash Mohammad Barakeh 2.98% 3 0 One Nation Amir Peretz 2.76% 3 +1 Balad Azmi Bishara 2.26% 3 +1 Yisrael BaAliyah Natan Sharansky 2.15% 2 -4 United Arab List Abdulmalik Dehamshe 2.08% 2 -3 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.

Prime Minister before Prime Minister after Ariel Sharon Likud Ariel Sharon Likud

Elections for the 16th Knesset were held in Israel on 28 January 2003. The result was a resounding victory for Ariel Sharon's Likud.

The previous separate election for Prime Minister was scrapped, and the post was returned to the leader of the party successfully forming the working coalition government.

Similarly to the 2001 elections for the position of prime minister, these elections were also affected by the Second Intifada, which was a period of intense fighting and Palestinian militancy campaigns. Despite the fact that since the last elections there was a significant deterioration in the security situation in Israel, after Operation Defensive Shield in May 2002 and Operation Determined Path in June 2002, there was an improvement in the security situation.

The fact that Binyamin Ben-Eliezer was the defense minister in most of this period (until the unity government was dismantled) did not allow the Labor party to establish an alternative to government policies, mainly because it was difficult to present a position contrary to that which was supported by the party up until then. Contributing this was the militaristic tendency of large sections from the Israeli public that supported more severe measures than those which were actually implemented against the Palestinians for militant and terrorist attacks against Israelis. This tendency led to a situation in which the significant differences regarding the way Israel should react to the Intifada were not split between the Labor party and the Likud party, but rather between the dovish faction in the Labor party (which supported the positions of the left-wing Meretz party) and the hawkish faction in the Labor party (whose position was very close to that of the Likud party).

Although Prime Minister Ehud Barak did not run in these elections (and in practice was almost two years out of the political system), at the time Ehud Barak and the Labor Party were widely considered by many in the Israeli public as those directly responsible for the outbreak of the second intifada.