Prof. Alon Tal will continue to serve as the head of the Green Movement, the
party announced on Monday after two days of delay due to voting
problems.
Tal, an environmental policy expert at Ben-Gurion University of
the Negev, has been instrumental in creating much of Israel’s environmental
framework, founding the legal advocacy group Adam Teva V’Din-Israel Union for
Environmental Defense and the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. In
addition to being among the founders of the Green Movement, Tal also served in
the past as the chairman of Life and Environment, the umbrella organization of
Israel’s environmental groups.
Results of the vote, which took place on
Friday in Tel Aviv, were delayed because the party management discovered that a
few of the voters had registered inappropriately, Tal told
The Jerusalem Post.
While the party was able to sort out the issue, Tal said his margin would have
been wide enough to not make a difference regardless.
“As a party which
believes [in] fanatically good government and clean politics, we have zero
tolerance for any type of corruption,” Tal said.
In second place in the
Green Movement internal elections was once again Racheli Tidhar-Caner, who will
serve as Tal’s co-chair. Hadas Shachnai, a former Tel Aviv city council member,
achieved third place and will serve as the secretary-general of the
party.
While the members approved an agreement with Tzipi Livni to run on
her Knesset list during the party’s convention on Friday, they still have not
officially decided on joining the list and are still reviewing other options,
according to Tal.
“We are happy to run ourselves and we are happy to do
our work in a coalition,” he said.
All in all, Tal said he was grateful
for the chance to once again lead the Green Movement.
“It was a hard
fought primary, lots of emotion,” Tal said. “Sometimes people went too far. But
in the end I’m extremely grateful that such a diverse and eclectic group
representative of different factions in our party voted for me by such a wide
margin.”