Gesher
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- This article is about the Israeli political party. For more information on the future microarchitecture which will be used in Intel microprocessors, see Gesher (CPU architecture).
Gesher ("Bridge"), is an Israeli political party set up by David Levy.
Levy mistakenly believed he could draw a mass defection from the Likud of Knesset members, and such a disaster would lead senior party members in the Likud Central Committee into a panic that would topple Benjamin Netanyahu. What instead occurred was that only David Magen, a rather obscure Moroccan politician and former mayor of Kiryat Gat who served as Minister of Economics and Planning in the last Itzhak Shamir government broke with the Likud. Though many of Gesher's members were derided by the press as lackeys of Levy, Magen would prove to be rather independent, and later broke with Levy to join the Center Party in 1998 (then known as Israel in the Center).
Gesher on its own never reached the potential Levy predicted for it, and Netanyahu's campaign to topple Rabin helped revitalize the Likud and bring in new members. One disadvantage for the disaffected populist leader was the constant press attention on the Oslo Accords, waves of terror attacks, rumours of negotiations surrounding the Golan Heights' future, and the low priority that the media gave to economic and labour issues. Levy had to walk a fine line between opposing Netanyahu's hard-line rhetoric too harshly (thereby appearing to be an ally of Yitzhak Rabin), and not making enough noise (which would cause his members to lose interest). The idea of joining Rabin's Labour Party openly even in coalition was at that time still unacceptable to many Moroccans and other Mizrahim resentful of the old Mapai that had preceded Labour.
