Ale Yarok
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Ale Yarok
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| Leader | Ohad Shem Tov |
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| Founded | 1999 |
| Headquarters | P.O.Box 2901, Jerusalem 91028 |
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| Ideology | Liberalism, Environmentalism |
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| Website www.ale-yarok.org.il |
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Ale Yarok (Hebrew: עלה ירוק, Green Leaf) is a minor liberal political party in Israel best known for its ideology of decriminalizing cannabis. To date it has had no representation in the Knesset.
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[edit] History
The party gained 1% of the vote in the 1999 elections,[1] and 1.2% in the 2003 elections,[2] but both times failed to pass the 1.5% threshold for representation in the Knesset. After failing to make it into the Knesset in the 2003 elections, the chairman of Ale Yarok Boaz Wachtel announced that he was giving up the leadership of the party, but remained in the position due to party members requests.
Before the 2006 elections the party announced that it intended to run for a third time, despite the threshold for representation having been raised to 2%. The party competed for votes with the supporters of the Democratic Choice (which later stepped down from running in the election) and with Meretz-Yachad, which had also promised to act for the decriminalization of soft drugs; another competitor was the Israeli Green Party with a strong ecological platform. The party gained 1.3% of the vote, and came second among those parties failing to make the threshold.[3] After this election, Wachtel passed the chairmanship to Ohad Shem Tov, at 27 the youngest chairman of any political party since the establishment of Israel.
[edit] Ideology
The party's platform is based on the legalization of the Cannabis plant, marijuana and hashish, ecology, expansion of human rights and institutionalization of prostitution, gambling and same-sex marriage.[4] In official publications the movement claims that "the partition between Right-wing and Left-wing is anachronistic"; it holds "dovish" political opinions and believes in the solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by establishing an independent and demilitarized Palestinian state (see two-state solution). However, the party is considered by the Israeli public as the "light drugs party" since this is the main issue that gets attention in the party's platform.
According to its website, "The GLP [Green Leaf Party] is a libertarian party and it encourages individuals and societies to upgrade their way of solving disputes to a cooperative-game logic."[5] However its platform calls for government subsidies for alternative energy, increased government spending on day care, education, and medical care, tougher labour laws, the regulation of "casinos and bordellos", the imposition of "strict limits on animal experiments", and the continued prohibition of drugs "more harmful" than marijuana. It "believes in redistribution of the resources in order to benefit the weaker sectors" and that "providing a high quality education to all citizens is the foremost obligation of the state to its citizens".[4]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ 1999 Election Results (Final) Knesset website
- ^ 2003 Election Results Knesset website
- ^ 2006 Election Results Knesset website
- ^ a b Platform Ale Yarok
- ^ Our Party Ale Yarok
