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Israel's Political History
1963-1977
In 1963 Ben-Gurion resigned as prime minister and moved down to Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev. Levi Eshkol succeeded him. His period as prime minister saw a rapprochement with the Herut Movement. In 1964 Eshkol agreed to have the remains of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, brought for burial in Israel. In 1966, Eshkol also oversaw the dismantling of military rule over the country's Arab citizens. In 1965 the Herut Movement joined forces 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 launched a series of terrorist attacks against Israelis and Israeli targets abroad, and in the years 1969-70 Israel became embroiled in a war of attrition against Egypt.
 Eshkol died in 1969 and was succeeded by Golda Meir. The following year the national unity government broke up over the Rogers Plan, a US peace initiative. it was during Meir's tenure that the Yom Kippur War broke out in October 1973. Golda resigned less than half a year after the war, following publication of the Agranat Commission which scored Israeli leaders for the country having been caught by surprise by invading Arab armies.
The next government was headed 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. These agreements are credited for establishing the principle of Israeli readiness to trade land 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 with Israel, and following the Yom Kippur War many African states and 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 waging 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 from an Air France jet that had been hijacked to Uganda.
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