The peace process and the israeli elections

After Ehud Barak and Labour defeated Binyamin Netanyahu in June 1999,
Ariel Sharon was chosen by a demoralized Likud party as a temporary
caretaker. Less than two years later, in a special election held in February
2001, Sharon defeated Barak to become prime minister, gaining record
support exceeding 60 per cent of the vote. Sharon proceeded to build on
this foundation, forming a national unity government (NUG), and after the
coalition collapsed, triggering the general elections of 2003, Sharon led the
Likud to a sweeping victory.
The key to this startling and far-reaching change in Israeli politics is
clearly to be found in the catastrophic failure of the Oslo process and the
Palestinian campaign of violence that followed. Indeed, foreign policy and
issues related to the last phase of the Oslo negotiations dominated Israeli
politics after 1999. The prominence of the peace process in Israeli politics is
hardly a new phenomenon, but there has been a fundamental change in the
way the public relates to the peace process. In the wake of the Six-Day
War, Israelis increasingly came to believe that they were able to shape
their relations with the Arab states and the Palestinians. As a result, the
ideological debate over the future of the territories became a major part of
the political discourse. In contrast, in the wake of the collapse of the Oslo
process, the ideological divide over the peace process has been replaced by a
growing consensus, as the Israeli public no longer believes that Israel has
much ability to alter the fundamental positions of the Palestinians, at least in
the short term. Overall, the results of the 2001 and 2003 elections - and the
general consensus that they reflected - should not be seen as a temporary
ripple, but rather as representing a transformation within Israeli politics.
The focus on security and existentialissues is likely to continue well beyond
the second Sharon administration.