1996 in Israel

The May 1996 election campaign took place about six months after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, with Shimon Peres serving as his successor.[4] It unfolded amid terrorist attacks and escalating conflict in northern Lebanon, while the peace process remained a central political divide.[5][6] Peres had been an outspoken advocate of partnership with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat but lacked Rabin’s security credentials.[7]

The election also introduced a fundamental change in the way Israelis chose their government: an amendment to Basic Law: The Government provided for separate votes for the Knesset and the prime minister.[8] Previously untested in a national election, the two-ballot arrangement allowed voters to support a candidate for prime minister while choosing a different party for parliamentary representation.[8] The arrangement separated voters’ choices but still left the prime minister dependent on a parliamentary coalition, as illustrated by Netanyahu’s need to assemble a six-faction government after the election.[4][2]

On the Palestinian side, the first elections for the presidency and Palestinian Legislative Council were held on January 20.[9] Arafat easily won the presidency of the Palestinian Authority, while the newly elected council’s powers remained ill-defined.[7] Hamas did not participate as an organization, although some individuals associated with it stood independently.[9]

Israel’s northern security concerns centered on Hezbollah attacks from southern Lebanon and rocket fire directed at Israeli communities.[1] An earlier ceasefire arrangement sought to regulate the conflict, but exchanges of fire and escalating Hezbollah attacks preceded the Israeli campaign in April.[6][10] In Jerusalem, a separate disagreement over a proposed northern exit from the Western Wall Tunnel had already emerged before Netanyahu took office: Israeli authorities regarded the tunnel as separate from the Temple Mount, whereas the Muslim Waqf regarded it and the surrounding area as part of its holy site.[11]

On February 5, Peres decided to call early elections for the Fourteenth Knesset, setting the vote for May 29.[12] The election was brought forward by about six months, at a time when he enjoyed a substantial lead.[5] The campaign subsequently unfolded amid suicide attacks against civilians, making personal security a central political issue.[4]

Four suicide bombings struck Jerusalem, Ashkelon, and Tel Aviv in late February and early March.[13] On February 25, a bomber attacked a No. 18 bus in Jerusalem; another attack that day killed one Israeli at a hitchhiking post in Ashkelon.[13] A second No. 18 bus bombing occurred in Jerusalem on March 3, followed on March 4 by a suicide bombing outside Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Center.[13] The attacks included victims who were children, foreign workers, and American citizens.[1][14]

The February 25 Jerusalem bombing killed approximately 25 people and injured about 80; three American citizens were among those killed.[1][14] The March 3 bombing killed 19 people, including Palestinian and Romanian workers.[15] At Dizengoff Center, the dead included six children.[15] The bombings were part of a series of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad attacks intended to undermine the Palestinian Authority and disrupt the Israeli–Palestinian peace process.[15]

Claims of responsibility accompanied the attacks: a Hamas battalion claimed the February 25 Jerusalem bombing and subsequently denied involvement, while a Hamas leaflet presented it as retaliation for the killing of Yahya Ayyash.[14] A Hamas splinter group claimed the March 3 bombing, and both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed the March 4 attack.[14] Israel responded to the wave with a total closure of Palestinian Authority territories and pressure on Arafat to act aggressively against extremist Islamic organizations.[16] In March, the United States convened an international anti-terrorism conference in support of Peres.[7]

Regional diplomacy also produced new economic openings during the year.[3] Israel and Oman agreed in January to establish reciprocal trade representative offices.[3] Israeli trade offices opened in Oman and Qatar in May, and an Omani trade representation office opened in Tel Aviv.[3] These relationships emphasized economic, scientific, and commercial cooperation, including water resources, tourism, agriculture, chemicals, and advanced technologies.[3]

On April 11, Peres authorized Operation Grapes of Wrath to stop Hezbollah rocket attacks on populated areas in northern Israel.[17] The campaign combined air, artillery, and naval attacks, striking Hezbollah targets and Lebanese infrastructure, including roads and an electricity station north of Beirut.[1][17] Fighting extended to Beirut, and Lebanese ports were blockaded.[1] Hezbollah continued daily Katyusha attacks, with hundreds of rockets reaching northern Israel during the campaign and residents spending extended periods in shelters.[17][6]

Israel publicly warned civilians in southern Lebanon to leave areas it intended to attack.[1] The fighting created an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 or more temporary refugees in Lebanon, while Hezbollah rocket fire drove approximately 20,000 to 30,000 civilians from their homes in northern Israel.[1] More than 150 Lebanese civilians were killed and hundreds wounded during the operation; dozens of people were wounded in Israel.[1] Israeli objectives included striking Hezbollah infrastructure and pressuring the Lebanese government, and through it Syria, to restrain Hezbollah.[6]

On April 18, Hezbollah fired mortars at an Israeli military unit from near the United Nations compound at Qana, and Israeli forces responded with artillery fire.[1] Israeli shells struck the compound, where Lebanese civilians had taken shelter, killing more than 100 people.[1][18] At least 800 civilians were sheltering there, and the wounded included four Fijian peacekeepers.[18] Israel expressed regret and maintained that the compound had not been intentionally shelled.[1]

The Qana deaths brought international condemnation and were followed by American-mediated negotiations.[19] An understanding made public on April 26 committed armed groups in Lebanon not to attack Israel and committed Israel and the South Lebanese Army not to fire on civilians or civilian targets in Lebanon.[10] It also prohibited using civilian areas and industrial or electrical installations as launching grounds for attacks.[10] Its central protection stated that “civilians will never be the target of any attack.”[10]

Permanent-status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians began on May 5 and were immediately adjourned.[1] Their intended subjects included Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees, Israeli settlements in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and Gaza, final security arrangements, borders, and other matters of common interest.[1] The opening of these talks therefore preceded the Israeli election, but substantive final-status negotiations did not continue under the incoming government.[20]

Netanyahu’s campaign united Likud with the right-wing Gesher and Tzomet parties and emphasized security and opposition to further territorial concessions.[21] He advocated continuing the peace process under the slogan “Peace with Security.”[22] On election day, a security operation named “Moad 96” deployed approximately 20,000 police, military and Border Police personnel, Shin Bet staff, and Civil Guard volunteers to prevent attacks.[4] It was the largest security operation in Israel’s history up to that time.[4]

Voting on May 29 produced different winners in the two contests.[2] Netanyahu received 1,501,023 votes and Peres received 1,471,566; contemporary accounts place their shares at approximately 50.4–50.5 percent and 49.5–49.6 percent, respectively.[5][2] In the Knesset election, Labor won 34 seats, ahead of the Likud-Gesher-Tzomet alliance’s 32.[2] Overall turnout was 79.3 percent.[5] Twenty parties contested the election, and eleven entered the Fourteenth Knesset.[4]

Smaller parties gained strength as Labor and Likud lost ground.[5] Shas won ten seats and Yisrael Be’aliyah seven.[2] Labor and Meretz together fell from 56 seats in 1992 to 43 in 1996.[5] The direct prime-ministerial vote also revealed a pronounced difference between voting sectors: Netanyahu won 55.5 percent of Jewish voters, while Peres received 94.7 percent of Arab voters.[5]

Netanyahu formed a six-faction coalition comprising Likud, Shas, Yisrael Be’aliyah, the National Religious Party, the Third Way, and United Torah Judaism.[4] He became Israel’s youngest prime minister up to that time and its first chosen directly by voters.[21] Sworn in on June 18, he held a handover meeting with Peres and convened his first cabinet meeting.[23] The new government had 17 ministers.[24]

The new Knesset included nine women out of 120 members, compared with eleven in the preceding parliament.[15] Arab representation rose from seven members to eleven, while Druze representation fell from two to one.[15] Elsewhere in public life, the Israeli Air Force admitted women to pilot training for the first time during 1996, following a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1995.[1] Two training classes included women by the time the annual human-rights report was prepared.[1]

Religious and civic tensions also appeared in demonstrations over Sabbath traffic in Jerusalem.[15] During July and August, demonstrators sought to compel the municipality to close Bar-Ilan Street to vehicles on the Sabbath.[15] The protests included civil disobedience and violence, and police used excessive force in responding.[15]

On September 24, a new northern exit from the Western Wall Tunnel opened to the public, connecting the tunnel with the Via Dolorosa.[25] Netanyahu authorized a plan involving an exit beneath a school that had previously been rejected.[25] The opening was associated with tourism and the assertion of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, while Palestinians viewed the construction as a threat to Al-Aqsa Mosque.[25] A Waqf representative had warned in a February letter that opening the exit would cause tension and harm the city’s economy and image.[11]

Protests and fighting followed the opening and Palestinian leaders’ calls to demonstrate, against a background of frustration over the slow pace of the peace process.[1] Violence spread from Jerusalem to the West Bank and Gaza, involving Israeli forces, Palestinian security officers, and civilians.[1] Palestinian police fired on Israeli soldiers.[26] The fighting continued over several days, killing dozens of Israelis and Palestinians and injuring about 1,500 people.[1] The clashes became the immediate backdrop to the early-October Washington summit and intensive talks over Israeli redeployment in Hebron.[27]

An early-October summit in Washington brought Netanyahu and Arafat together with United States President Bill Clinton after the September violence.[27] Clinton announced that both leaders had renounced violence and recommitted themselves to continuing the peace process.[27] They agreed to begin intensive talks on implementation of the interim agreements, particularly Israeli redeployment in Hebron.[27] The stated purpose was to coordinate implementation rather than renegotiate agreements already reached.[27]

The Netanyahu government’s negotiations with the Palestinians concentrated on carrying out the interim agreement rather than addressing final-status questions, including Jerusalem.[20] Final-status talks that had opened in May did not continue during the government’s term.[20] Netanyahu’s Twenty-Seventh Government remained in office from June 1996 until May 1999.[24]

The April ceasefire created the five-party Israel-Lebanon Monitoring Group, comprising the United States, France, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria, to investigate complaints of violations.[10] It adopted working rules in July 1996 and operated for nearly four years.[10] Over that period, it examined 607 complaints—298 submitted by Israel and 309 by Lebanon—and issued 103 public statements.[10]

The monitoring arrangement contributed to a reduction in civilian casualties, although precise comparisons were difficult because Lebanese statistics did not distinguish civilians from combatants.[10] Its rules addressed both direct attacks on civilians and the use of civilian locations for military launches.[10] Peres had also sought a ceasefire that would protect Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, alongside a commitment to negotiate a full withdrawal after a nine-month trial period.[10]

The two-ballot system did not eliminate coalition dependence. It enabled voters to separate their choice of prime minister from their choice of party, while the 1996 result left Labor with more Knesset seats than the alliance led by the victorious prime-ministerial candidate and gave smaller parties substantial parliamentary blocs.[8][2] Direct election of the prime minister was later repealed by the Knesset in 2001.[28]

The 1996 election established the unusual combination of a directly elected prime minister whose alliance had finished second in the parliamentary contest.[2] The simultaneous rise of smaller parties demonstrated that a personal mandate for the head of government did not eliminate coalition dependence.[4][2] Security, the peace process, religious identity, and the distribution of parliamentary power all figured in contemporary explanations of the outcome.[5]

Interpretations of Peres’s defeat have differed from a simple account of voters rejecting negotiations with the Palestinians.[5] One contemporary analysis emphasized that successful parties accepted the Oslo Accords as binding and located the principal disagreement in implementation, security, and the pace and direction of the process.[5] It also connected religious parties’ gains with concerns over the Jewish character of the state.[5] Other analysis linked the result to Rabin’s assassination, the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv bombings, Syrian president Hafiz al-Assad’s refusal to advance the peace process, and changing political preferences among new Russian immigrants.[29]

The suicide bombings and the Lebanon campaign shaped assessments of the political climate, but their precise electoral effects remain matters of interpretation.[5][4] Retrospective accounts treated the terrorist attacks and the Qana deaths as developments that weakened Peres, while contemporary analysis cautioned against explaining the result through any single factor.[5][4] The September tunnel opening likewise had consequences beyond the immediate clashes: it contributed to the erosion of tacit understandings governing relations at the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif.[11]

The principal disputes concern responsibility for Qana and explanations of the September violence.[1][11] Israel maintained that the UN compound was not intentionally targeted, while a UN investigation concluded that it was “unlikely that the shelling was due to technical or procedural error.”[1] Explanations of the tunnel crisis differ over the opening’s significance, the warnings preceding it, and decision-making within the Israeli government.[11][26]

Casualty totals also vary. Qana accounts give 102 or 106 civilians killed.[1][18] Reports of the September fighting range from 16 Israeli soldiers and border police and 58 Palestinians to 25 Israeli soldiers and about 100 Palestinians.[1][25] Reports of individual February–March bombings likewise differ, including between separate contemporary government reports.[1][14] These differences limit the precision of aggregate totals without changing the central place of civilian losses, terrorism, and armed confrontation in accounts of the year.[1][14]