Natan Sharansky also served as a contributing editor to "The Jerusalem Report" and as a Board member of Peace Watch. In 1995, Sharansky and Yoel Edelstein founded the Yisrael BaAliyah party (a play of words, since "aliya" means both Jewish emigration to Israel, and "rise", thus the party name means "(People of) Israel immigrating (to the State of Israel)", as well as "Israel on the rise"), promoting the absorption of the Soviet Jews into Israeli society. The party won seven Knesset seats in 1996. It won 6 seats in the Israeli legislative election, 1999, gaining two ministerial posts, but left the government
Natan Sharansky from the cabinet in April 2005 to protest plans to withdraw Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank. He was re-elected to the Knesset in March 2006 as a member of the Likud Party. On 20 November 2006, he resigned from the Knesset. His resignation was meant to allow him to form the right-leaning Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies. The funding came from American billionaire Sheldon Adelson. Since 2007, Sharansky has been Chairman of the Board of Beit Hatefutsot, the Jewish diaspora museum. In June 2009, Sharansky was elected to the Chair of the Executive of the