Free Centre
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The Free Centre (Hebrew: מרכז חופשי, Merkaz Hofshi) was a political party in Israel, and is one of the ancestors of the modern-day Likud.
[edit] Background
The party was created during the sixth Knesset when Shmuel Tamir led a breakaway of three Gahal members (the other two being Eliezer Shostak and Avraham Tiar) after a leadership dispute with Menachem Begin. Before the next election they were joined by Shlomo Cohen-Tsiddon who had also left Gahal.
In the 1969 elections the Free Centre only just passed the electoral threshold of 1%, claiming 1.2% of the vote and 2 seats, which were taken by Tamir and Shostak.
Before the 1973 elections, the party merged with Gahal, the National List and the non-parliamentary Movement for Greater Israel to form Likud. The new party won 39 seats, with both Tamir and Shostak being elected to the Knesset on the its list.
However, another dispute led to Tamir leaving Likud and re-establishing the party along with Akiva Nof during the eighth Knesset. Both resigned from the Knesset before the session ended, and reappeared in the ninth Knesset as members of Dash (Nof later defected back to Likud after a spell in Akhva).
