the Russian-speaking community in Israel. The new party won four seats. Due to Ehud Barak's victory in the 1999 election, the new party sat in the opposition in the new Knesset. On 1 February 2000, while sitting in the opposition, the party joined an alliance with the National Union, itself an alliance of mainly Religious Zionist right-wing parties led by Binyamin Elon, both parties remained fairly independent. The joint list joined Ariel Sharon's new unity government formed after the 2001 Israeli prime ministerial election. However, it attempted to quit the government just a few months later after Sharon's government gave another neighborhood of Hebron to the Palestinian authority. This move was delayed by Rehavam Ze'evi's assassination, but the joint list, now led by Lieberman, left the coalition in 2002 anyway. In the 2003 Knesset election the Lieberman-led joint list won seven seats, with his Yisrael Beiteinu being given four of them. The alliance joined Ariel Sharon's government, and Lieberman was made Minister of Transport; however, the party left the government on 6 June 2004 in response to the disengagement plan. On 1 February 2006, shortly before the election that year, the party split from National Union in order to run alone. The two parties believed that they would each increase their power if they ran alone, because Yisrael Beiteinu mainly targeted Israel's right-wing secular Russian-speaking community, while the National Union mainly targeted Israel's national-religious community. During the election campaign, Yisrael Beiteinu split from mainstream right-wing policy by offering a new peace plan based upon land and population transfers; this became known as the Lieberman plan. The party's new outlook on security was bolstered by a recent addition to the party, former Shin Bet deputy director Yisrael Hasson, who was notably not a member of the Russian-speaking community, and represented an attempt to reach out to new demographics. The 2006 election was a great success for Yisrael Beiteinu, which increased its power to 11 seats; the party joined Ehud Olmert's governing coalition in October 2006. The party entered a dispute with its coalition partner the Labor Party in January 2007, over Labor nominating Raleb Majadele for the position of Minister of Science and Technology, thereby making him Israel's first Muslim Arab minister. Lieberman condemned the nomination, and called for the resignation of the Labor Party's head Amir Peretz, accusing him of harming Israel's security by ceding to "internal rivalries" within the