Twenty-Sixth Government of Israel

The Twenty-Sixth Government emerged directly from the political context of its predecessor. In the June 23, 1992 elections for Israel's Thirteenth Knesset, the Labor Party won 44 seats, ending six years of Likud-led government and bringing Labor back to power for the first time in fifteen years.[1][2] Labor leader Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister in July 1992, forming a coalition with Meretz — a bloc of three leftist parties — and Shas, an ultra-Orthodox religious party, with additional outside support from two Arab-majority parties.[1] The 1992 campaign had focused on deteriorating security amid the Intifada, religion-and-state tensions, and rising unemployment.[2]

After Shas departed from the coalition, Rabin's government depended on votes from Arab parties in the Knesset, rendering it a minority government.[1] Rabin simultaneously served as minister of defense throughout his second term.[3] The defining achievement of his government was the Oslo peace process. Israeli and Palestinian representatives began secret talks in Oslo in December 1992; U.S. officials were briefed but played little role in those negotiations.[4] On September 9, 1993, Rabin signed a document recognizing the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people, and four days later, on September 13, he and PLO negotiator Mahmoud Abbas signed the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements at the White House.[4][5] Israel accepted the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians; the PLO renounced terrorism and recognized Israel's right to exist in peace.[4]

The Declaration set out an interim arrangement rather than resolving final-status issues such as Jerusalem, settlements, and borders. It called for the establishment of a Palestinian Authority to assume governing responsibilities in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and the Gaza Strip over five years, followed by permanent-status talks.[4] Subsequent agreements deepened the framework: the May 1994 Cairo Agreement finalized Israel's withdrawal from most of Gaza and Jericho, and the September 1995 Oslo II (Taba) Agreement divided the West Bank into zones with differing arrangements for Israeli and Palestinian control.[4] Rabin also signed the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace on October 26, 1994.[3]

In his October 5, 1995 Knesset address, presenting the Oslo II Interim Agreement, Rabin stated that Israel's permanent borders would lie beyond the pre-1967 lines — "We will not return to the June 4, 1967 lines" — and declared that "the security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term."[6] The peace process was domestically contested. Rabbi Sacks later recounted privately urging Rabin to devote attention to negotiating with Israeli opponents, especially religious Zionists, alongside the Palestinian track; Rabin's reply acknowledged concerns among Israelis living in the territories but rejected obstruction, calls for violence, and undemocratic efforts to destabilize Israel's political system.[7]

Rabin was assassinated at a peace rally on November 4, 1995, by Yigal Amir, described by U.S. State Department sources as an Israeli who opposed the Oslo Accords on religious grounds and as a right-wing Jewish radical.[4][8] At a special cabinet meeting that night, ministers voted to appoint Peres acting prime minister; approximately two weeks later, he completed the formation of a new government.[9][10]

The Knesset approved Peres's government on November 22, 1995, with 62 members voting in favor.[11] The government served until June 18, 1996, and comprised 21 ministers.[12]

Peres formed his government quickly, and its parliamentary basis closely mirrored that of Rabin's outgoing administration.[10] The Labor–Meretz base provided 56 Knesset members, supplemented by outside support from Hadash and Mada and from former Tzomet members Gonen Segev and Alex Goldfarb.[13] Although 62 Knesset members voted in favor of the government's formation, retrospective accounts describe it as a minority government from its establishment — characterized by one source as the only minority government in Israel's history.[11]

The three principal personnel changes from the Rabin cabinet were: Peres assumed the prime minister and defense portfolios, and also held economy and planning; former Chief of Staff Ehud Barak, who had been interior minister under Rabin, became foreign minister; and Haim Ramon returned to the government as minister of the interior after rejoining the Labor Party and leaving his Histadrut post.[10][14] Rabbi Yehudah Amital was appointed minister without portfolio, a notable addition to the cabinet.[10] Most other ministers continued in the portfolios they had held under Rabin.[10]

The full cabinet roster included: Ephraim Sneh (health), Amnon Rubinstein (education and culture), Haim Ramon (interior), Shulamit Aloni (communications, science and the arts), Ya'akov Tsur (agriculture), Gonen Segev (energy and infrastructure), Yisrael Kessar (transportation), David Libai (justice), Avraham Shochat (finance), Moshe Shahal (public security), Micha Harish (industry and trade), Benjamin Ben-Eliezer (construction and housing), Yossi Sarid (environment), Yossi Beilin and Yehudah Amital (ministers without portfolio), Yair Tsaban (immigrant absorption), Uzi Baram (tourism), Shimon Shetreet (religious affairs), and Ora Namir (labor and welfare).[12] Ezer Weizman served as president and Emanuel Hollander as cabinet secretary.[12]

The government's official policy guidelines described the circumstances of its formation as "unprecedented painful" and stated that it would seek to continue Rabin's path.[15] The document identified national and personal security, protecting democracy, continuing the peace process, economic growth, immigration absorption, equality, and human rights as the government's central goals.[15]

On peace and security, the guidelines committed the government to implementing the Interim Agreement with the PLO and to seeking full peace with Syria, Lebanon, and other Arab countries.[15] They simultaneously called for strengthening the IDF and its deterrent capability, acting against terrorism and violence, and maintaining personal security while observing law and human rights. The document also committed the government to provide for the existential, security, and municipal needs of residents of settlements in Judea and Samaria and Gaza, and to reinforce settlement along the confrontation lines.[15] On Jerusalem, the guidelines stated that a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty was the government's position, while also calling for access to holy places and freedom of religion.[15]

The guidelines proposed active regional cooperation alongside the peace process, encompassing economic, cultural, and scientific cooperation, and called for strengthened relations with the United States, European countries, Russia, the Commonwealth of Independent States, China, and Japan.[15]

On immigration, the government called for social, economic, and spiritual conditions to facilitate absorption, with particular attention to employment suited to immigrants' education and qualifications, and to housing. The guidelines specifically invoked continued immigration from Russia and the other states of the Commonwealth of Independent States, continued efforts to absorb Ethiopian Jewry, and efforts to rescue persecuted Jews and enable their immigration to Israel.[15]

The economic agenda set targets for higher growth and exports, employment, and infrastructure investment spanning transportation, electricity, communications, water, sewage, high-tech industries, tourism, and research and development. The document proposed privatizing some state-owned enterprises while protecting employees' rights, retaining state control of natural monopolies and sensitive defense industries, and strengthening development towns with particular emphasis on the Galilee and Negev.[15]

The guidelines committed the government to full civil equality for Arab, Druze, and Circassian citizens and to narrowing gaps in housing, infrastructure, welfare, industry, agriculture, youth services, health, and tourism. They called for equalizing budgets for Arab, Druze, and Circassian local authorities and for greater representation of these communities in public institutions, and for action on master plans for Arab, Druze, and Bedouin communities, including unrecognized communities.[15] On legal and democratic institutions, the guidelines proposed completing Basic Laws toward formulating a constitution, strengthening judicial independence, establishing a public defenders' office, a family court, and an administrative court, and reviewing laws inherited from the British Mandate period, including the Defense Emergency Regulations and the Press Ordinance.[15]

After taking office, Peres continued the Rabin government's Oslo commitments, including military redeployment in the West Bank and the organization of Palestinian elections.[16] On January 20, 1996, voters in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip elected 88 members of the Palestinian Council and the president of the Palestinian Authority; Yasser Arafat received 88.1 percent of the presidential vote, and candidates from his Fatah group won a large majority in the Council.[10][16]

Peres called early elections for May 29, 1996, after about three months in office, seeking a personal mandate to carry out the Oslo Accords amid broad public support.[10][16]

The period leading up to the 1996 election was marked by severe security crises that shaped both the government's actions and the election's outcome. In late February and early March 1996, a series of suicide attacks on Israeli civilian targets — carried out predominantly by the Hamas terrorist organization — struck the country.[10] The government responded by imposing an almost total closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip through the election period.[10]

On the northern front, after attacks on Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon's security zone and Katyusha rocket fire into Israel, Peres ordered the IDF to launch Operation Grapes of Wrath on April 11, 1996, intended to stop Hezbollah rocket fire on Israeli communities near the Lebanese border.[10][17] The operation lasted approximately two weeks.[18] On April 18, an artillery strike near Qana hit a building sheltering Lebanese civilians and UN personnel; the cited accounts put the death toll at approximately 100 to 102.[18][19] The Qana incident drew severe international criticism of the government and its Lebanon policy; Peres blamed Hezbollah, saying it carried out attacks while hiding behind Lebanese civilians.[10] The United States subsequently mediated a ceasefire understanding signed on April 26.[18]

The Israel Ministry of Defense Archives records that Peres was active in fighting terrorism throughout his tenure and directed the IDF to launch Operation Grapes of Wrath before his term as prime minister ended in June 1996.[17] The operation's failure, international pressure, and continued attacks inside Israel were described as factors that weakened Peres politically ahead of the election.[19]

The May 29, 1996 election was Israel's first direct vote for prime minister, using a two-ballot system under which voters chose both a prime-ministerial candidate and a party for the Knesset.[20] The contest between Peres and Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu proved extraordinarily close. After 98 percent of ballots had been counted — excluding soldiers' and sailors' votes — Netanyahu led Peres by 1.2 percent; Peres had received 49.2 percent of the vote at that stage, and Netanyahu's eventual victory was described as a dramatic reversal of election-night expectations.[20]

The final result gave Netanyahu 50.5 percent of the valid vote to Peres's 49.5 percent, a margin of roughly 30,000 votes.[10][20] In the simultaneous Knesset vote, Labor won 34 seats and the joint Likud-Gesher-Tsomet list won 32.[10][20] Netanyahu formed the succeeding — Twenty-Seventh — government on June 18, 1996, bringing the Peres administration to a close.[12]

Netanyahu presented his Likud-led Twenty-Seventh Government to the Knesset on June 18, 1996.[21] Likud won 22 Knesset seats on its own; the broader Likud bloc, including the Gesher and Tsomet factions, held 32.[22] Netanyahu formed a coalition of nine parties, described at the time as the widest in Israel's history.[22] The cabinet included Dan Meridor as finance minister, Ya'acov Ne'eman as justice minister — both described by the cited analysis as moderates — Yitzhak Mordechai as defense minister, and Avigdor Kahalani as internal security minister.[21] The nationalist Moledet party, a partner in an earlier Likud-led coalition, was excluded from the new government.[21]

The coalition opened with 66 seats but proved unstable from an early stage. In January 1998, David Levy left the government with four Gesher colleagues, reducing it to 61 of the Knesset's 120 seats.[23][1] The remaining coalition comprised Likud (22 seats), Shas (10), the National Religious Party (9), Yisrael B'Aliya (7), Tsomet (5), United Torah Judaism (4), and The Third Way (4).[23]

Despite his anti-Oslo election platform, Netanyahu's government continued aspects of the process that 80 percent of Israelis supported implementing.[24] The government withdrew Israeli troops from 80 percent of Hebron in 1997, an example of the administration continuing part of the process despite its political opposition to Oslo.[24] Coalition factions threatened to leave over diametrically opposed positions on a proposed further redeployment of 13 percent of the West Bank: right-wing members opposed territorial concessions, while The Third Way warned it would leave if the redeployment did not proceed.[23]

In October 1998, Israeli, Palestinian Authority, and U.S. delegations met at Wye River, Maryland, to negotiate Oslo implementation. The resulting Wye River Memorandum included an Israeli withdrawal from 13 percent of the West Bank, the release of Palestinian prisoners, increased Palestinian Authority–Israeli security cooperation, and a Palestinian renunciation of political violence.[24] Because Netanyahu's government depended on religious parties that might revolt over the agreement, Ehud Barak's Labor Party promised support in exchange for Netanyahu signing it.[24] After the memorandum was approved, however, Labor withdrew its support, and Likud called for elections ahead of schedule.[24] Opposition to the agreement among religious-party members and supporters of the political right further destabilized the coalition.[24]

In the 1999 election, Ehud Barak defeated Netanyahu. The result was characterized by a contemporary Washington Institute analysis as a clear verdict against Netanyahu's leadership.[25]

Several aspects of both the Twenty-Sixth Government and the broader period it represents remain subject to political and historical debate. The Oslo process and its provisions concerning Palestinian self-government, territorial arrangements, and the division of the West Bank into zones of varying Israeli and Palestinian control were politically contested at the time and remain so; sources consulted for this article differ in perspective on the aims, consequences, and responsibility for subsequent events, and descriptions of outcomes should be understood as reflecting those sources' accounts rather than settled interpretation.[4][24]

The government's policy guidelines placed implementation of the Oslo Interim Agreement alongside commitments to meet the security and municipal needs of settlement residents in Judea and Samaria and Gaza. They also stated that a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty was the government's position.[15]

The Qana incident during Operation Grapes of Wrath is historically and politically sensitive; casualty figures and characterizations of responsibility for the civilian deaths vary across accounts, and the figure cited in this article — approximately 100 to 102 — reflects the specific reports consulted.[18][19] Peres attributed the civilian deaths to Hezbollah's tactic of conducting attacks from positions among civilians.[10]