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politically with good democratic grace, but a great deal of anger and contempt remained. Nev-
ertheless, Israel did not develop a clear two-party system, and since 1977, ideological debate has
sharply declined in favor of a framework favoring issues and personalities.
In retrospect, the 1977 political shift and subsequent events signaled the end of Israel's
founding heroic era and the transition to a more typical, established society. Precisely because
of Israel's survival as a state and its normalization and institutionalization, the more socialist,
statist concepts and institutions from the pre-state era no longer suffi ced. The collectivist,
idealistic ethos that had made sovereignty possible gave way to a more individualistic, materi-
alistic ethos typical of Western societies. At the same time, the population became more inte-
grated and homogeneous despite the diversity existing within three frameworks:
Ashkenazic
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Mizrahi (the Jews of European and of Middle Eastern and North African origin, respectively),
religious-secular, and Jewish-Arab.
These societal developments were simultaneous with, but relatively unrelated to, the im-
portant but abstract debate between 1967 and 1993 about how to deal with the ongoing Arab-
Israeli confl ict. In the 1967 war, Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from
Egypt, the West Bank and east Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.
Israel's political left argued that the Arab states and the Palestinians (though not necessarily
the Palestine Liberation Organization, PLO) would one day negotiate seriously and, when that
happened, Israel should trade much of the territory captured in 1967 in exchange for peace.
The political right said that an offer of genuine peace would never take place and therefore
Israel should deal with these territories as part of its patrimony and support Jewish settlements
there. The basic national consensus was against annexing the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, or the
Sinai, while many, including many on the left, supported incorporating east Jerusalem and the
Golan Heights into Israel.
Whatever the view on allowing or encouraging Jewish settlement in the captured territories,
neither side in Israeli politics tried hard to stop it. After all, if there were ever a peace agree-
ment, the settlements could be dismantled. And as long as there were no serious peace negotia-
tions with the Palestinians, who were still being led by a PLO that espoused terrorist tactics and
rejected Israel's existence, these and other hard decisions could be left to the future.
Such debates notwithstanding, each time a promising opportunity to explore the chances
for peace appeared, the Israeli government explored them. The fi rst came when Egyptian
President Anwar al-Sadat decided that Egypt's interests required an end to the confl ict with
Israel. Menahem Begin, then prime minister of Israel, eagerly responded at the Camp David
meeting in 1978 by handing back the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and agreeing to dismantle Jewish
settlements there in exchange for a peace treaty. The leadership of Israel's political right, the
National Camp, demonstrated pragmatic fl exibility on this occasion.
The Israeli internal debate continued but remained largely moot until the Oslo Accords of
1993. That agreement was an experiment, albeit a risky one, to see if peace could be achieved.
Israel turned over large parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to PLO rule; it also admitted
thousands of Palestinians, including the PLO leaders who had previously waged war on Israel's
civilians. The Palestinian Authority (PA), which the PLO created to govern the territory, re-
