Meretz leader Zehava Galon announced Wednesday that in light of disappointing election results, she planned to step down as the head of the party and quit the Knesset altogether. Meretz, which won six Knesset seats in the 2013 election, got a disappointing four seats in Tuesday's election. Galon declared that she would vacate her seat to make room in the Knesset for fellow party member Tamar Zandberg, who ranked fifth on the party list. Galon hinted even before the election that she would step down if the party failed to reach the objectives it had set for itself. "At the start of the campaign, I said that if Meretz succeeds, it will be a joint success for all of us, but if Meretz fails to live up to our expectations I will take full and personal responsibility," Galon wrote Wednesday on her Facebook page. "That is why I announced this morning that I would resign and vacate my Knesset seat, so that fellow party member Tamar Zandberg can serve instead of me." "I will not vie for the leadership of Meretz again, but I will remain its chairwoman until the position is filled in an organized manner in the near future," she wrote. "This is a very difficult time for me," she went on to say. "I hoped that Meretz would retain its power and even more than that I hoped that we could establish an alternative government and put an end to the age of Netanyahu. Unfortunately, that is not at all what happened. I don't want to hear anyone in our camp dare say that the voters let us down. On the contrary: We let them down."
