Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In the election, Kadima secured the most seats, twenty-nine, with Labor second at nineteen
and Likud, with only twelve seats, suffering a very heavy defeat. The new government formed
under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, approved on May 4, 2006, was dominated by the Kadima-
Labor coalition. Peretz became deputy prime minister and defense minister, and Tzipi Livni
became foreign minister.
HAMAS'S ELECTION VICTORY AND THE LEBANON WAR OF 2006
Events outside Israel were undermining Olmert's convergence plan as well as the success of
Sharon's disengagement. In the Palestinian election on January 25, 2006, Hamas won 74 of the
132 seats in the parliament with 45 percent of the popular vote. Hamas opposed Israel's exis-
tence; it sought an Islamist state in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean
Sea and employed openly antisemitic and genocidal rhetoric.
The Israeli government refused all contact with the new Hamas-led administration until
the group committed itself to accepting the existing agreements between Israel and the PA,
abandoned the use of terrorism, and accepted Israel's right to exist — steps laid out by the road
map plan of the Quartet. Hamas was uninterested in changing its policy.
On the day that Olmert's new cabinet was sworn in, a Palestinian suicide bomber from
Hamas blew himself up in Tel Aviv, killing nine Israelis. Hamas and its smaller allies began fi r-
ing rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, which made withdrawal from the Gaza Strip seem
a mistake to many Israelis and made them less willing to support more withdrawals. The crisis
escalated with the June 25, 2006, kidnapping of an IDF soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, by Hamas
in a cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip into Israel in which two other soldiers were killed.
Another challenge came in the north from the Lebanese Hizballah, which had taken ad-
vantage of Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon to seize control of the area. In its third
attempt to do so, Hizballah launched a July 12 cross-border attack, kidnapping two soldiers
and killing three others. Israel responded with airstrikes and artillery fi re, some targeting
Hizballah-controlled neighborhoods in Beirut. The Israeli government announced that it was
not making war on the moderate Lebanese government but only against Hizballah.
Hizballah responded by fi ring hundreds of rockets against Israeli civilians, around 4,000
in all, during the ensuing confl ict. The small, inaccurate rockets usually landed in open fi elds,
but they still closed down economic activities and normal life in the north. Israeli bombing
attacks destroyed Hizballah's longer-range missiles and many of the weapons being sent in by
Hizballah's patrons, Iran and Syria, across the Lebanon-Syria border. Large numbers of civil-
ians on both sides were displaced by the fi ghting.
The management of the war by Olmert, the inexperienced Peretz, and the chief of staff,
General Dan Halutz, the fi rst air force offi cer ever to hold the top military post, drew much
criticism. Among other issues, questions were raised about the decision to go to war in the
fi rst place, the lack of clear strategic goals, the attempt to use air power almost exclusively in
the earlier stages, improper preparation of reserve units, and the late commitment of ground
troops without proper support to attack entrenched Hizballah positions. The Olmert govern-
ment did gain U.S. support for delaying imposition of a ceasefi re, but it did not use the time
to achieve any great objective.
