Founded in 1973 by Shulamit Aloni, a former Labor Party Knesset member, the CRM has played an active role in calling for strengthening civil rights in Israel, particularly regarding issues involving the boundaries between the state and religion, and in advocating a peace settlement with the Palestinians and the Arab states based on territorial compromise. In the 1988 Knesset elections, the party increased its representation to five seats, compared with three in 1984. The party has traditionally allied itself with Labor, although it has refused to join Labor in unity governments with Likud. The CRM received considerable support from the country's liberal community, and prominent among its leaders were Knesset members Yossi Sarid (formerly of the Labor Party) Ran Cohen, a high-ranking reservist in the IDF and Mordechai Bar-On and Dudy Zucker, leaders of the Peace Now (see Appendix B) movement.

Data as of December 1988