Israel

An upheaval has taken place in the political landscape in Israel since 2005, with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to design and swiftly execute a disengagement plan from the Gaza Strip. This was followed by Sharon’s move to shatter his own parliamentary majority party by creating Kadima, a new party, with an explicit agenda for further withdrawal from the Occupied West Bank. Sharon’s sudden illness and the subsequent turnover of power to Ehud Olmert occurred during the early 2006 election that ended with the victory of Kadima and a significant decrease in popular support for Likud. Subsequent negotiations led to the establishment of a broad coalition government based on the political platform of unilateral withdrawal.

At the regional level, a surge of violence led to the intensification of the conflict between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories and to a full scale war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon during 2006. The military’s performance in the war and the response of civilian institutions to the emergency situation in the north of the country revealed serious deficiencies.