1999 Israeli general election

1999 Israeli general election

17 May 1999
Prime ministerial election
← 1996 2001 →
Turnout	78.71%
Candidate Ehud Barak Benjamin Netanyahu Party One Israel Likud Popular vote 1,791,020 1,402,474 Percentage 56.08% 43.92%
Prime Minister before election Benjamin Netanyahu Likud Prime Minister after election Ehud Barak One Israel
Knesset election
← 1996 2003 →
Party Leader Vote % Seats +/– One Israel Ehud Barak 20.26 26 −11 Likud Benjamin Netanyahu 14.14 19 −8 Shas Aryeh Deri 13.01 17 +7 Meretz Yossi Sarid 7.66 10 +1 Yisrael BaAliyah Natan Sharansky 5.19 6 −1 Shinui Yosef Lapid 5.07 6 New Centre Party Yitzhak Mordechai 5.00 6 New Mafdal Yitzhak Levi 4.24 5 −4 UTJ Meir Porush 3.80 5 +1 Ra'am Abdulmalik Dehamshe 3.47 5 −1 National Union Benny Begin 3.03 4 New Hadash Mohammad Barakeh 2.63 3 −1 Yisrael Beiteinu Avigdor Lieberman 2.60 4 New Balad Azmi Bishara 2.00 2 +1 One Nation Amir Peretz 1.94 2 New This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. Speaker of the Knesset before Speaker of the Knesset after Dan Tichon Likud Avraham Burg One Israel

Early general elections for both the Prime Minister and the Knesset were held in Israel on 17 May 1999 following a vote of no confidence in the government; the incumbent Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ran for re-election.

The elections were only the second time in Israeli history that the prime minister had been directly elected; the first such election in 1996 had been an extremely tight contest between Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud and Shimon Peres of Labor, with Netanyahu winning by just 29,000 votes.

Labor leader Ehud Barak, promising peace talks with the Palestinians and withdrawal from Lebanon by July 2000,^[1][2] was elected Prime Minister with 56% of the vote.