MK Amir Peretz (Zionist Union) is returning to the Labor party and will run with that party in the next elections, Channel 2 News reported Friday.

According to the report, Peretz recently informed MK Tzipi Livni, who chairs the Hatnua party of which Peretz is currently a member, of his intentions to return to Labor. Sources close to both sides confirmed the report.

Peretz reportedly also tried to convince Livni and Labor chairman MK Yitzhak Herzog to unite the two parties permanently, but Livni was adamant that “Hatnua will not be part of the Labor party”.

Of course, Hatnua and Labor ran together in the last elections under the name Zionist Union, with spots on the Labor list reserved for Livni and Peretz, among others.

Livni’s decision to run together with Labor and only guarantee spots for one or two candidates forced the resignations of former MKs such as Amram Mitzna, who later blasted Livni for “behaving like a dictator”, and Elazar Stern, who is set to return to the Knesset as a member of Yesh Atid, following the resignation this week of Shai Piron.

Peretz was once the chairman of the Labor party and, in that capacity, served as Defense Minister in Ehud Olmert’s government.

Before the 2013 elections, Peretz dropped a bombshell and, at the last minute, quit Labor and joined Hatnua, due to his tense relations with then-party chairwoman Shelly Yechimovich.

As a member of Hatnua Peretz served as Environment Minister in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s previous government before resigning due to his claims that the government was “extreme right”.

(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)