1963-1977
In 1963 Ben-Gurion resigned as prime minister and went to live on kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev, and Levi Eshkol took over. His period as prime minister saw a rapprochement with the Herut Movement (in 1964 Eshkol agreed that the remains of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, be brought to Israel for burial), and the dismantling of the Military Administration, which governed the country's Arab citizens until 1966. In 1965 the Herut Movement joined with the Liberal Party to form the Gahal political bloc (which in 1973 became the Likud), and in the same year Mapai formed the first Alignment, with another social democratic party, Ahdut Ha'avoda.

With the outbreak of the Six Day War in June 1967, Eshkol formed the country's first national unity government with Gahal. The war eventually changed the political map and the major issue over which elections were to be fought: the future of the territories occupied by Israel in the course of the war -- the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), and the Golan Heights. In the aftermath of the war the PLO and other Palestinian organizations embarked on succession of terrorist attacks against Israelis and Israeli targets abroad, and in the years 1969-70 Israel was engaged in a war of attrition against Egypt.

Eshkol died in 1969 and was succeeded by Golda Meir, and the following year the national unity government broke up over the Rogers Plan, a peace initiative of the then American secretary of state. Meir was tough and inflexible, and it was during her tenure that the Yom Kippur War broke out in October 1973. Golda resigned less than half a year after the war, following the publication of the interim report of the Agranat Commission on the failures in defense leadership that preceded the war.

The next government was formed in 1974 by Yitzhak Rabin, who had been chief of General Staff during the Six Day War and later ambassador to the US. During his first premiership, which lasted until 1977, Israel signed -- thanks to the mediation of then US secretary of state Henry Kissinger -- disengagement agreements with Egypt and Syria, and an interim agreement with Egypt. These agreements first established the principle of "territories for peace."

It was partially against this background that Gush Emunim, a right-wing movement concentrating on Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria, was formed in 1974. These were difficult years for Israel in the international arena. Following the Six Day War most of the Soviet bloc broke off diplomatic relations, and following the Yom Kippur War most of the African states and some other Third World countries followed suit. In 1975 the UN General Assembly passed its infamous "Zionism equals racism" resolution. The PLO, which strengthened its international status in 1974, continued its terrorist attacks against Israel, whose leadership refused to have anything to do with it. In a brilliant military operation in July 1976, the IDF freed and brought home Israeli hostages flown by terrorists to Uganda.