1992 in Israel

When Israelis went to the polls in June 1992, roughly fifteen years had passed since Likud first came to power in 1977. That period included governments led solely by Likud as well as national-unity governments in which Likud and Labor shared power.[1] The incumbent government was headed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. His Likud-led coalition of right-wing and religious parties had been formed after the previous national-unity government collapsed and Labor leader Shimon Peres failed to assemble an alternative coalition with religious parties.[2]

The election followed the 1991 Gulf War, during which Israel refrained from retaliating against Iraqi missile attacks after appeals from the United States, and the opening of the Madrid peace process in October 1991. Although the Bush administration praised Israel's wartime restraint and helped convene the negotiations, relations with Shamir's government remained strained.[3]

Economic and social conditions added to the pressure on the government. Inflation had fallen to a single-digit annual rate, but unemployment exceeded 11 percent, and mass immigration had increased Israel's population by roughly 10 percent in a short period.[1] Labor campaigned on changing national priorities by directing more resources toward development towns and infrastructure inside the Green Line rather than toward settlements in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and the Gaza Strip.[1]

Crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations provided an additional backdrop. In February 1992, President George H. W. Bush linked Israel's request for $10 billion in loan guarantees for immigrant resettlement to a freeze on construction in the West Bank. An INSS analysis states that the refusal to release the funds became a major campaign issue and contributed to Likud's electoral defeat.[4]

Elections for the Thirteenth Knesset were held on June 23, 1992. The electorate numbered 3,409,015, and 2,616,841 valid votes were cast.[5] Turnout was reported at approximately 77 percent, down from the 79 to 80 percent recorded during much of the 1980s.[1] Twenty-six parties competed, but only ten party lists cleared the qualifying threshold, which legislation during the Twelfth Knesset had raised from 1.1 percent to 1.5 percent.[1] Combined with the wave of new immigrants who had enlarged the electorate, the higher threshold increased the number of votes needed for a party's first Knesset seat from approximately 22,000 in 1988 to almost 40,000 in 1992.[1]

Before the general election, Yitzhak Rabin won the Labor Party's first leadership primary, defeating Shimon Peres, Ora Namir, and Yisrael Kessar with just over the mandatory 40 percent of the vote.[5] A retrospective account by Rabin political adviser Jacques Neriah describes Rabin as the central figure in Labor's "Time for a change" campaign and recalls high public expectations for his government.[6]

Labor won 906,810 votes, representing 34.7 percent of the valid vote, and secured 44 Knesset seats, up from 30 in the Twelfth Knesset.[5][5] Likud fell from 40 seats to 32. The remaining seats were distributed as follows: Meretz 12, Tzomet 8, the National Religious Party 6, Shas 6, Yahadut ha-Torah 4, Hadash 3, Moledet 3, and the Arab Democratic Party 2.[5] Tzomet quadrupled its representation from two seats to eight, while Tehiya failed to pass the threshold. Its approximately 32,000 votes would have been sufficient under the previous threshold.[1][5]

The combined Labor-Meretz-Arab bloc held 61 seats, providing Rabin with the parliamentary basis to form a government.[1] The national-religious camp declined from 65 seats in the Twelfth Knesset to 59 in the Thirteenth.[1] Contemporary analysis treated the transfer of power as significant but not necessarily as evidence of a decisive transformation in public opinion. Right-wing splinter parties that failed to clear the threshold had received enough votes that a different configuration might have denied Labor its governing advantage.[5]

Rabin took three weeks to form a government after the election. The coalition consisted of Labor, Meretz, and Shas, which together held 62 Knesset seats.[5] Five members from Hadash and the Arab Democratic Party agreed to support the government from outside the coalition under an arrangement with Labor.[5] Rabin later summarized the narrow parliamentary margin with the statement, "A majority of one is a majority."[6]

The first meeting of the new Knesset took place on July 13, 1992, and Rabin became prime minister that month.[5][2] Shimon Peres was appointed foreign minister, while Rabin retained the defense portfolio.[5] Other key appointments included Yossi Beilin as deputy foreign minister, Haim Ramon as health minister, and Shulamit Aloni as education and culture minister.[1]

Shas joined the coalition, while the National Religious Party remained outside because of its hawkish position on the peace process.[1] The coalition's early period was marked by tension between secular Meretz and religious Shas, particularly over Aloni's role as education minister and remarks that offended Shas leaders.[5] The government continued a basically liberal economic policy and affirmed privatization in principle while giving greater attention to development towns and the Arab sector. It also continued, at that stage, to allocate funds to Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip and to yeshivot.[5]

Two laws enacted by the outgoing Twelfth Knesset shaped Israel's constitutional landscape in 1992.

On March 17, the Knesset passed Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, described by the cited source as Israel's tenth Basic Law.[7] The law declared that human rights are based on recognition of human value, the sanctity of life, and human freedom. Its stated aim was "to defend Human Dignity and Liberty, in order to establish the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state."[7] It addressed protections including the right to leave and enter the country, privacy, intimacy, and protection from searches, while permitting restrictions on dignity and liberty only in accordance with law.[7]

Former Supreme Court Justice Haim Cohen described the formal affirmation of Israel as both Jewish and democratic as "truly 'innovative.'"[8] The law's presentation of those values as complementary was later challenged by political currents that gave greater weight to ethnic nationalism than to liberal democracy and minority rights.[8]

The Twelfth Knesset also amended Basic Law: The Government to provide for direct election of the prime minister alongside the Knesset election.[9] Under the new arrangement, voters would use two ballots, one for a party list and one for prime minister. The amendment was first implemented in 1996. A special prime-ministerial election was held in 2001, and the previous single-ballot procedure returned for the 2003 Knesset election.[9]

U.S.-Israeli relations improved during the Rabin government's first months. Rabin announced a freeze on new housing construction in the occupied territories on July 13, 1992, and the Labor coalition approved a partial construction freeze on July 19.[3] The measures were understood to meet the Bush administration's conditions for releasing the loan guarantees.

During Rabin's August 12–13 visit to the United States, President George H. W. Bush and Rabin announced American support for the guarantees.[3] Congress approved $10 billion in loan guarantees under Title VI of Public Law 102-391 on October 6, 1992.[3] The approval ended a dispute that had publicly strained relations and that an INSS analysis identifies as one factor in Likud's electoral defeat.[4]

The new government's acceptance of the land-for-peace principle also represented a formal break with the position of the preceding Shamir governments. The Labor government accepted exchanging land for peace and withdrawing from some occupied territories, in contrast to the Shamir governments formed in November 1988 and June 1990, which had rejected the territory-for-peace formula associated with U.N. Security Council Resolution 242.[3]

A retrospective account by Rabin political adviser Jacques Neriah portrays the prime minister's objective as achieving peace with Israel's Arab neighbors. Neriah argues that Rabin viewed the circumstances of 1992 as favorable because of his public standing, the unipolar international system after the Soviet Union's breakup, the weakening of regional adversaries after the Gulf War, and the political fragmentation of the right-wing opposition.[6]

Rabin initially continued the Madrid framework. In August 1992, he sent Israeli negotiating teams to Washington to resume talks with Arab delegations. Itamar Rabinovich was appointed to lead the Syrian team, while Elyakim Rubinstein continued to head the Jordanian-Palestinian team and Uri Lubrani the Lebanese team.[6] On September 9, Rabin told the Knesset, "We have deep disagreements with Syria but there is the beginning of a dialogue."[6] Neriah's account argues that the Madrid format failed to produce substantive progress and records Rabin's growing preference for separate, discreet negotiations backed by direct American involvement.[6][6]

Meanwhile, a secret channel was being organized. Although unofficial Israeli-PLO contacts had existed since the 1970s, they intensified after the Rabin government moved to remove remaining legal constraints on them.[10] In spring 1992, Norwegian researcher Terje Rød-Larsen approached Yossi Beilin with information that key PLO members were fatigued by the intifada and willing to explore an accommodation recognizing Israel's right to exist in peace and security. After Labor's election victory, Beilin proposed a Norwegian back-channel to Peres, who allowed preliminary work to proceed while cautioning against official Israeli involvement. Yair Hirschfeld and Ron Pundak became the unofficial Israeli representatives, while Yasser Arafat selected Abu Ala as the PLO's principal negotiator.[10]

Preparations for the channel were underway during 1992, although the first substantive secret meeting outside Oslo took place in January 1993.[10] Following the December expulsion of 415 Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists and the standstill in the Washington talks, Israel began secret negotiations with the PLO in Norway.[11] The process ultimately produced the Declaration of Principles signed on September 13, 1993.[1] Rabin's election campaign had not proposed abandoning the West Bank or establishing a Palestinian state during his first term, making the later diplomatic shift more extensive than the campaign platform itself.[1]

Mass immigration remained a major domestic challenge throughout 1992. A table covering selected countries records 73,073 immigrants, including 65,093 from the former Soviet Union.[12] The arrival of more than 65,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union in one year intensified pressure on housing, employment, and social services already strained by the wider immigration wave.[12][1] Immigration also affected electoral representation because the larger electorate and higher qualifying threshold raised the approximate number of votes needed for a party's first seat from 22,000 in 1988 to nearly 40,000 in 1992.[1]

Contemporary statistical sources differ slightly on Ethiopian immigration. The selected-country table lists 3,648 Ethiopian immigrants in 1992, while a study drawing on Ministry of Absorption and Central Bureau of Statistics reports lists 3,538 and warns that historical figures varied among government publications.[12][13] The same study records more than 20,000 Ethiopian immigrants in 1991, the year of Operation Solomon, and states that by the end of 1993 virtually all Beta Israel were in Israel.[13]

The immediate challenge in 1992 was absorption. By June, almost 24,000 Ethiopian immigrants were living in temporary absorption facilities.[13] Between June and September, thousands were moved from hotels and other facilities to caravan sites. In November, the government estimated that evacuating all caravan sites would take three to four years and that 6,000 apartments would have to be acquired for Ethiopian immigrants.[13]

HUC-JIR launched a certificate program in 1992 to train Russian immigrants as communal leaders, and more than 12,000 new immigrants participated in its ulpan during the following four years.[14]

The final weeks of 1992 were marked by escalating Palestinian terrorism and a large Israeli security response. During the first two weeks of December, Palestinians from the occupied territories killed six Israeli security-force members. On December 13, Hamas kidnapped an Israeli, whose body was found two days later.[15]

On December 17, the Rabin government deported 415 suspected Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists to southern Lebanon. The Israeli Supreme Court upheld the deportations.[15] Those deported included Mahmoud al-Zahar and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, who later returned to Gaza and became leading Hamas figures.[15]

The policy was intended to distance terrorist operatives, damage terrorist infrastructure, and deter further attacks. A later INSS study uses the 1992 deportation as a case study in how such a measure may have adverse long-term consequences and encourage terrorism rather than reduce it.[16] The Knesset's historical account of the Thirteenth Knesset also places the expulsion and the resulting standstill in the Washington talks in the background to Israel's subsequent secret negotiations with the PLO in Norway.[11]

On March 17, 1992, a terrorist bombing destroyed Israel's embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and killed 29 people.[17] The dead included three Israeli embassy personnel, six local embassy employees, and Argentine civilians, including elderly residents of a nearby nursing home and schoolchildren on a passing bus.[17]

Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the attack. In 2024, an Argentine federal court declared that Iran and Hezbollah had organized, planned, financed, and executed the bombing.[17] The attack remained a major unresolved trauma in Argentine-Israeli relations and demonstrated the international reach of Iran-backed terrorism against Jewish and Israeli targets.

Despite the U.S. loan-guarantee dispute and the Buenos Aires bombing, Israel expanded its diplomatic relationships in 1992. It established formal diplomatic relations with China and India, broadening its ties to two of the world's most populous states.[18]

During the civil war in Yugoslavia, Israel also sent a plane carrying 13 tons of medicine and food to residents of the war-torn region.[19]

Israel's population in 1992 stood at 5,195,900, comprising approximately 4,242,500 Jews, 725,400 Muslims, 140,900 Christians, and 87,100 Druze. These groups represented 81.7 percent, 14.0 percent, 2.7 percent, and 1.7 percent of the population, respectively.[20] Vital statistics recorded 110,062 live births, 33,327 deaths, a natural increase of 76,735, 32,769 marriages, and 7,029 divorces.[21]

A milestone in Israeli religious life came when Rabbi Naamah Kelman was ordained as the first female Progressive rabbi in Israel.[14] The ordination attracted substantial public attention and caused a stir within the Orthodox community. HUC-JIR president Alfred Gottschalk recalled, "The Israeli press was amazed by us," and described the event as the beginning of a form of Jewish leadership in Israel in which women had a place alongside men.[14]

In sport, 25-year-old Yael Arad won a silver medal in women's judo at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, becoming the first Israeli athlete to stand on an Olympic medal podium.[19]

The Skirball Museum developed a program for blind visitors, while the publications Dan — 25 Years of Excavations and the Biran Festschrift appeared among HUC-JIR's listed institutional developments for the year.[14] In politics, Mapam joined Ratz and Shinui in a common electoral list called Meretz, uniting parties that advocated territorial compromise, civil and human rights, and separation of religion and state.[22]

The events of 1992 shaped Israeli politics, diplomacy, and security during the remainder of the decade. Labor's victory ended approximately fifteen years in which Likud had governed alone or shared power in national-unity governments and enabled a shift toward direct negotiations with the PLO.[1] The Oslo channel was organized during 1992 and entered substantive negotiations in January 1993, eventually producing the Declaration of Principles signed on September 13, 1993.[10][1]

The constitutional legislation also had lasting importance. Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty formally expressed Israel's character as both Jewish and democratic and became a focus of continuing debate over the relationship between those principles.[7][8] The direct-election amendment was first implemented in 1996; a special prime-ministerial election followed in 2001 before the single-ballot system returned in 2003.[9]

The December deportations generated a sharply disputed legacy. An INSS retrospective argues that the policy illustrates how deportation can encourage terrorism rather than achieve lasting deterrence.[16] Mahmoud al-Zahar and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, both among those deported, later returned to Gaza and became leading Hamas figures.[15]

The establishment of diplomatic relations with China and India broadened Israel's international reach.[18] Immigration from the former Soviet Union remained equally significant at home: more than 65,000 immigrants arrived from the region during 1992, contributing to Israel's demographic growth and the urgent challenge of absorption.[12][20]

Yael Arad's silver medal made her Israel's first Olympic medalist, while Naamah Kelman's ordination marked a milestone for women's leadership in Israel's Progressive Jewish movement.[19][14]

Interpretations of 1992 emphasize both transformation and continuity. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs argues that Labor's victory enabled the later move toward direct negotiations with the PLO, while cautioning that the election did not necessarily represent a decisive ideological realignment. Its analysis points to votes lost by right-wing splinter parties below the higher electoral threshold and to the limited territorial commitments in Labor's campaign.[1][5]

Security assessments have produced a similar debate over the December deportations. Although the government intended the policy to weaken terrorist organizations and deter attacks, a later INSS study presents it as an example of a counterterrorism measure capable of producing adverse long-term results.[16] These interpretations make 1992 a political turning point whose electoral mandate and security consequences remain subjects of historical dispute.