Political Career
He was first elected to the Knesset in the 1999 elections on the National Religious Party list. After being re-elected in the 2003 elections, Orlev was appointed Minister of Welfare and Social Services in Ariel Sharon's government. During the crisis in the party over the Gaza disengagement plan, Orlev led the camp which believed staying in the government, rather than leaving the coalition, was the best option. In response, NRP leader Effi Eitam called Orlev a "Meimadnik". When Eitam and Yitzhak Levy quit the government in 2004, Orlev and many NRP members refused to leave the coalition. Orlev then succeeded in taking control of the party, resulting in Eitam and Levy leaving to form the Renewed Religious National Zionist Party (since renamed Ahi), which would later join the National Union.
Orlev was re-elected in the 2006 elections. Prior to the 2009 elections the NRP was dissolved and its members joined the Jewish Home. Orlev won second place on the new party's list, and retained his seat in the subsequent elections.
In 2009 the Knesset debated a Private Members Bill proposed by Orlev, providing for imprisonment of anyone who denied that Israel was a Jewish and democratic state. The bill passed its preliminary reading.
He is a co-president of the international Mizrachi movement, of which the National Religious Party and its successor Jewish Home politically represents.
Read more about this topic: Zevulun Orlev
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or career:
“I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author’s political views.”
—Edith Wharton (1862–1937)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)