Israel, country, Asia: The 1980s to the Present

The 1980s to the Present

Israeli troops briefly invaded (1979) Lebanon in an unsuccessful attempt to eliminate Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) bases and forces used in raids on N Israel. On June 6, 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon in a second attempt. Israeli troops advanced to Beirut and surrounded the western part of the city, which housed PLO headquarters, and a siege ensued. Israeli troops began a gradual move out of Lebanon (completed in 1985) after PLO forces withdrew from Beirut. A 6-mi (10-km) deep security zone within S Lebanon was established to protect N Israeli settlements.

Begin had been returned to office in 1981, but he resigned in 1983 and was replaced by Likud's Yitzhak Shamir. Undecisive majorities in the 1984 elections led to a sharing of the prime ministership by Shamir and Shimon Peres of the Labor party. Shamir, who regained sole prime ministership after the 1988 elections, strongly upheld the policy of increased Jewish settlement in the occupied territories. Large numbers of emigrants from Ethiopia and, primarily, the Soviet Union increased Israel's population by nearly 10% in three years (1989–92), leading to increased unemployment and a lack of housing.

In Dec., 1987, a popular Arab uprising (Intifada) began against Israeli rule in the occupied territories. During the Persian Gulf War in early 1991, Israel suffered Iraqi missile attacks, as Iraq unsuccessfully attempted to disrupt the allied coalition and widen the war. Peace talks between Israel, Syria, Lebanon, and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation began in Aug., 1991.

Rabin reentered the political scene in 1992, becoming prime minister after the defeat of the Likud party and the establishment of a Labor-led coalition. He pursued Arab-Israeli peace negotiations, in which significant progress was made. In 1993, Israel and the PLO signed an accord providing for joint recognition and for limited Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho. In 1995, Israel and the PLO agreed on a transition to Palestinian self-rule in most of the West Bank, although acts of terrorism continued to darken Israeli-Palestinian relations. In 1994 a treaty with Jordan ended the 46-year-old state of war between the two nations.

In Nov., 1995, Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli extremist who opposed the West Bank peace accord with the PLO; Peres, who was foreign minister, became prime minister. In early 1996, Israel was hit by a series of suicide bombs, and Shiite Muslims launched rocket attacks into Israel from Lebanon. Retaliating, Israel blockaded the port of Beirut and launched a series of attacks on targets in S Lebanon.

The 1996 elections, in which the prime minister was elected directly for the first time, resulted in a narrow victory for Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu, who opposed Labor's land-for-peace deals. In an attempt to allay fears about Israel's future policies, Netanyahu pledged to continue the peace process. After setbacks and delays, most of Hebron was handed over to Palestinian control in Jan., 1997, and, under an accord signed in 1998, Israel agreed to withdraw from additional West Bank territory, while the Palestinian Authority pledged to take stronger measures to fight terrorism. Further negotiations over territory, however, were essentially stalled.

In the May, 1999, elections, Labor returned to power under Ehud Barak, a former army chief of staff. He formed a broad-based coalition government, promising to ease tensions between secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel, as well as to move the peace process forward. In September, Barak and Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, signed an agreement to finalize their borders and determine the status of Jerusalem within a year; Israel also began implementation of a plan to hand over additional West Bank territory, which was completed in Mar., 2000.

Barak's coalition was weakened in May, 2000, when three right-of-center parties pulled out of the government. In the same month, Israeli forces withdrew from the buffer zone that had long been maintained in S Lebanon. In July, negotiations in the United States between Israel and the Palestinians ended without success, and Israeli-Palestinian relations turned extremely acrimonious when a September visit by Ariel Sharon to the Haram esh-Sherif (the Temple Mount to Jews) in Jerusalem sparked riots that escalated into a new, ongoing cycle of violence in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Israel itself. Barak resigned in Dec., 2000, in an attempt to reestablish a electoral mandate, but he was trounced in the Feb., 2001, election by Ariel Sharon, who formed a national unity government.

Despite Israeli military incursions into Palestinian territory and attacks on Palestinian authorities and forces, Palestinian attacks on Israelis in Israel and the occupied territories did not end, and in 2002 Sharon's government ordered the reoccupation of West Bank towns in a new attempt to stop those attacks. In Oct., 2002, Labor members of the government accused Sharon of favoring Israeli settlers in the occupied territories over the poor, and withdrew their support. Left with a minority government, Sharon called for parliamentary elections in early 2003, and in January Likud won a substantial victory at the polls. The following month Sharon formed a four-party, mainly right-wing coalition government.

In May, 2003, Sharon's government accepted the internationally supported “road map for peace” with some limitations; the plan envisioned the establishment of a Palestinian state in three years. Talks resumed with Palestinian authorities, who also negotiated a three-month cease-fire with Palestinian militants, and Israel made some conciliatory moves in Gaza and the West Bank. Suicide bombings and Israeli revenge attacks resumed, however, in August, and in October Israel attacked Syria for the first time in 20 years, bombing what it termed a terrorist training camp in retaliation for suicide bombings.

Israel's ongoing construction of a 400-mi (640-km) fence and wall security barrier in the West Bank, potentially enclosing some 15% of that territory, brought widespread international condemnation in late 2003, and a July, 2004, advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (requested by Palestinians and the UN General Assembly) termed its construction illegal under international law because it was being constructed on Palestinian lands. Meanwhile, an Israeli court ruling (June) ordered the wall to be rerouted in certain areas because of the hardship it would cause Palestinians.

In March the killing of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin heightened tensions in the occupied territories, especially the Gaza Strip. Sharon's plan to withdraw from the latter, while supported by most Israelis, was rejected in a nonbinding vote (May, 2004) by Likud party members. The plan then resulted in defections from his coalition, but Sharon vowed to complete the withdrawal, which was being undertaken for security reasons, by the end of 2005. In Oct., 2004, he secured parliamentary approval for the plan. The plan also called for abandoning a few settlements in the West Bank while expanding others there. Sharon formed a new coalition that included the Labor party, which supported the Gaza withdrawal, in Jan., 2005. He subsequently agreed to a truce with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, and in Mar., 2005, Israeli forces began withdrawing from Jericho and other West Bank towns. The planned Gaza withdrawal sparked protests by settlers and their allies beginning in June, but in August the evacuation of the settlements proceeded relatively straightforwardly. Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza the following month.

In Nov., 2005, Shimon Peres lost his Labor party leadership post to Amir Peretz, a trade union leader. Peretz pulled Labor from the government, prompting new elections, and Sharon withdrew from Likud to form the centrist Kadima [Forward] party, in an attempt to force a realignment of Israeli politics and retain the prime ministership. In Jan., 2006, however, Sharon suffered an incapacitating stroke and was hospitalized. Ehud Olmert, the deputy prime minister, became acting prime minister and leader of the new party.

The Kadima party won a plurality in the Mar., 2006, elections, with Labor placing second. In April, Sharon was declared permanently incapacitated; Olmert became prime minister, and in May formed a new coalition government. Escalating rocket attacks from Gaza and the capture by Hamas guerrillas of an Israeli soldier led to an Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip in June, 2006, as well as other actions against Hamas and the Palestinians. Israel continue to mount attacks into Gaza in the succeeding months.

In July, Lebanese Hezbollah forces captured two Israeli soldiers, and Israel launched air attacks against targets throughout Lebanon and sent troops as far as 18.5 mi (30 km) into S Lebanon; Hezbollah responded mainly with rocket attacks against N Israel, including Haifa and Tiberias, but also offered resistance on the ground against Israeli forces. A UN-mediated cease-fire took effect in mid-August, and by early October Israel had essentially withdrawn from Lebanon. The invasion's aim of disarming Hezbollah and winning the release of the captured Israeli soldiers was in the main unattained, and Hezbollah's sustained resistance to Israeli forces enhanced the group's prestige in the Arab world. Amnesty International accused both sides of war crimes in the fighting, mainly because of their attacks on civilians.

As a result of the fighting in Gaza and Lebanon and the rise of Hamas in the Palestinian Authority, Olmert suspended his planned unilateral withdrawal from parts of the West Bank, and brought (Oct,. 2006) a far-right party into his government to strengthen the coalition in the Knesset. Also in October, Israeli police accused Israeli President Moshe Katsav of sexual assault and other crimes, prompting an investigation and leading to calls for Katsav to resign (which he refused to do). The Israeli group Peace Now asserted in November that, according to government documents, nearly 40% (and perhaps more) of the land on which Israel's West Bank settlements were built was privately owned Palestinian land, in violation of Israeli law. More current information given by the government to the group in Mar., 2007, indicated that private land made up more than 30% of the settlements but did not indicate how much was Palestinian-owned (the vast bulk of the private land in the first set of documents was Palestinian).

In Jan., 2007, the head of the Israeli armed forces resigned, taking responsibility for the unsuccessful anti-Hezbollah campaign of 2006; his resignation led the opposition to call for the prime minister and defense minister to resign as well. (An independent report, released in Apr., 2007, was critical of the prime minister's and defense minister's handling of the invasion.) Late in Jan., 2007, Katsav secured a suspension of his duties as president after Israel's attorney general said he was considering charging Katsav with rape and other crimes; a plea deal in June allowed him to plead guilty to lesser charges and avoid prison but forced him to resign. (In Apr., 2008, however, Katsav withdrew from the plea bargain and decided to contest any charges; he was convicted of rape in Dec., 2010.) and Shimon Peres was elected president earlier the same month.

The takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas forces (also in June, 2007) led to increased talks with the Palestinian Authority and other moves designed to strengthen President Abbas, as well as Israeli restrictions on cross-border trade into the Gaza Strip. In September, Israeli jets attacked a military site in N Syria that some reports suggested was part of nuclear program. Under U.S.-sponsorship, an international Mideast peace conference was held in Annapolis, Md., in Nov., 2007, in an attempt to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. In early 2008, in response to Hamas rocket attacks, Israel tightened its blockade of goods into the Gaza Strip, but that move and Israeli retaliatory attacks failed to stop the rocket attacks. In June, 2008, however, Egypt brokered a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza's Palestinian factions that included an easing of border restrictions, and the cease-fire largely held until November.

Also in June, Olmert, facing the loss of Labor party support because of an investigation into his alleged receipt of bribes, agreed to face a vote for the leadership of Kadima in Sept., 2008, in order to preserve the governing coalition; he later decided not to run for party leader. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was elected Kadima party leader, but she was unable to form a new governing coalition.

In Nov., 2008, significant fighting between Palestinian and Israeli forces began in Gaza, with rocket attacks against neighboring portions of Israel and Israeli retaliatory strikes against the Gaza Strip. In Jan., 2009, Israeli forces invaded the territory in what Israel said was an attempt to stop rocket attacks against Israel (during the fighting one rocket attack reached Ashdod, 20 mi (32 km) from Gaza). The extent of the destruction and number of non-Hamas deaths resulting from the fighting led to criticism of Israel, and both Israel and Hamas were accused by human rights groups of committing war crimes.

Parliamentary elections in Feb., 2009, resulted in a narrow plurality for Kadima and significant gains for Likud and other right-wing parties. Likud leader and former prime minister Netanyahu forged a largely right-wing coalition (the Labor party also joined the government), and became prime minister in April.

Israel's continuing approval of new construction in the West Bank led to U.S. criticism in Nov., 2009, that Israel was frustrating peace negotiations. The government subsequently suspended new construction for 10 months, but the exclusion of East Jerusalem from the moratorium and the continuing construction of buildings already begun was denounced by the Palestinians. When the moratorium ended in Sept., 2010, there had been little progress if any in negotiations, and a year later the Palestinian Authority unsuccessfully sought recognition from, and full membership in, the United Nations. Israel was widely condemned internationally for a deadly raid in May, 2010, on a Turkish-organized convoy that was seeking to challenge Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. The raid, which occurred in international waters, significantly strained Israel's already increasingly difficult relations with Turkey. Relations were not fully normalized again until Nov., 2016.

In May, 2012, after Netanyahu proposed early elections for Sept., 2012, Kadima joined the governing coalition, but it withdrew two months later in objection to a proposed replacement for an unconstitutional law that permitted students in religious studies to defer military service. In October the Knesset was dissolved and early elections called for Jan., 2013. In Nov., 2012, Israeli air strikes against the Gaza Strip, including one that killed the Hamas military chief, sparked the most intense cross-border attacks with Palestinian forces in the Gaza Strip since early 2009. After the Palestinian Authority received de facto recognition as an independent state from the UN General Assembly in Dec., 2012, the Israeli government authorized the development of thousands of new settler homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Beginning in 2013 Israel launched air strikes against forces in Syria allied with Assad in the civil war there.

In the 2013 elections the Likud alliance won a plurality but lost a quarter of the seats it had held. A center-right coalition government was formed in March, with Netanyahu again as prime minister; it was the first Israeli government in nearly three decades that did not include an ultra-Orthodox Jewish party. In mid-2013, U.S.-brokered peace talks resumed, but by Apr., 2014, they had essentially collapsed amid increased demands from Israel on retaining areas in the West Bank, Israeli approval for new settlements in the West Bank, a stalled Israeli prisoner release program, and a Palestinian bid for further recognition from UN agencies.

Israel blamed Hamas for the murder of three teenage settlers in the West Bank in June, 2014; its air strikes against Hamas and the Gaza Strip in July sparked a cycle of retaliatory attacks involving Hamas rocket attacks on Israel and Israeli air raids in Gaza, and Israeli forces entered Gaza in a ground offensive. A cease-fire was agreed to in August. Political tensions in the government led to the dismissal of centrist ministers in Dec., 2014, and parliament was subsequently dissolved. In the Mar., 2015., elections Likud won a plurality, with one fourth of the Knesset seats and roughly one fourth of the vote, about what it won in 2013. Netanyahu formed a largely right-wing coalition government in May; it was strengthened by the inclusion of a sixth party a year later.

In the second half of 2015, following the firebombing of a Palestinian home, a series of clashes and of attacks against Israelis erupted in the West Bank and Israel; the attacks continued into 2016. In 2017 Netanyahu's goverment approved guidelines that allowed the largely unconstrained building of new housing in existing West Bank settlements; it also moved forward with new Israeli housing in East Jerusalem. U.S. President Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital in Dec., 2017, was praised by Israeli leaders but denounced by Palestinians.

In the first half of 2018, Israeli strikes against Iranian forces in Syria led to a rocket attack on the Golan Heights and a subsequent Israeli retaliation against Iranian targets in Syria. Hamas mounted mass marches against the Israeli-Gaza border in March–May; more than 100 Gazans were killed and thousands wounded by Israeli fire. In late May, the marches were followed by exchanges of shelling and bombardment by Gaza militants and Israeli forces until a cease-fire was established. A second outbreak of such exchanges occurred in July, and in November an Israeli undercover incursion into Gaza resulted in several days of intense fighting. Meanwhile, in July. 2018, the Knesset adopted an alteration of Israel's basic law that emphasized the Jewishness of the state of Israel; the change provoked protests from Israeli Arabs and Druze.

Strains in Netanyahu's coalition led to early elections in Apr., 2019, when Likud won a narrow plurality, but Netanyahu was unable to cobble together a majority. Elections held in September led to a largely similar result, and a coalition government again proved difficult to form. New elections in March, 2020, again led to a divided Knesset, but opposition leader Benny Gantz agreed (April) to form a coalition with Netanyahu in which the two would alternate as prime minister. During 2019 there were again conflicts with Gaza and with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and also air strikes, increasingly involving drones, against bases belonging to Iranian-backed forces in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq.

In Jan., 2020, a peace plan proposal from U.S. President Trump that would consign large areas of the West Bank to Israel and create several separate Palestinian enclaves within Israel was rejected by Palestinians and did not lead to negotiations, and subsequent expectations that Israel would annex such areas led to increased tensions with Palestinians and internationally. Subsequently, however, the United States helped broker agreements (signed in September) between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in which the Arab nations recognized Israel. In return, Israel suspended its plans for annexation, but additional Israeli settlements in the West Bank were approved later in the year. Additional recognition agreements were subsequently signed with Morocco and Sudan. In Dec., 2020, the coalition government failed to pass a budget and collapsed, forcing new elections. In early 2021, there was renewed tension between Israel and Hamas, leading to 11 days of fighting, resulting in great physical damage and loss of life in the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu finally was ousted from his 12 consecutive-year run as prime minister by his former aide, Naftali Bennett, who formed a fragile coalition government including eight different parties from the far left to the ultraconservative. Bennett was elected by a single vote in the Israeli parliament in early June 2021. The governing coalition lasted just a year with new elections held in Aug., 2022 which was won by a coalition led by Netanyahu, restoring him as prime minister in Nov., 2022.

On Oct. 7, 2023, the Hamas government of the Gaza Strip sent a small force into S Israel, attacking several civilian settlements, IDF bases, and a music festival, killing more than 1,000 people and returning to Gaza with some 250 hostages. The attack also included the firing of some 3,000 rockets into Israel from Gaza. Israel responded initially with air strikes into Gaza and a blockade that included cutting off outside supplies of water and electricity. This was followed by a large-scale ground assault by Israel into Gaza. The months that followed saw widespread destruction in Gaza and skirmishes with Hezbollah in S Lebanon. The conflict also drew in Houthi rebels in Yemen, who fired rockets and drones toward Israel, which were shot down by U.S. war ships in the S Red Sea. The Houthis continued to fire on commercial ships in the area, causing disruption in international shipping. According to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, over 20,000 Palestinians were killed as of the end of the year.

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