Meretz head Gal-on set to resign after poor showing

As lackluster election results filtered in Wednesday morning, Meretz party chairman Zahava Gal-on announced that she will relinquish her seat and quit politics. The number of mandates Meretz received dropped from five seats to four overnight, with 99% of votes tallied.

“If in the final results, it turns out that Meretz got only 4 seats, then I will resign from the Knesset in favor of Tamar Zandberg,” Gal-on said, referring to No. 5 on the faction list.

Gal-on added that she will remain as chairman of Meretz until the facilitation of a “smooth transfer of the job” — presumably to party No. 2 Ilan Gilon.

If however Meretz was to regain a fifth seat, as the final 1% of votes filter in, then she would mull staying on, she added.

Election results featured a salient upset for left-leaning parties such as Meretz and the Zionist Union — who were poised in straw polls to possibly topple Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Gal-on had said in the lead up to election day that she would bear responsibility if her party were to underperform and not the reach the goals it set for itself.

Despite a strong showing in pre-election polls predicting that the far-left faction would receive between five to six mandates, Meretz officials voiced increasing concern in the final weeks that they may not pass the required electoral threshold of 3.25%, according to Channel 2.

“Meretz did it against all the odds, standing up to a new electoral threshold and bullies that tried to eradicate us,” Gal-on told supporters Tuesday night following initial election results that indicated the party had won five seats.

“We did it [standing] against two major parties that tried to grow at the expense of the ideological parties, and as it appears, the right [wing] truly succeeded,” she said.

“As opposed to them, we will stand strong in the next Knesset as well.”