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These developments strengthened the new public consensus that even though Israel no
longer wanted the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and was willing to trade them for full peace
and a Palestinian state, the option would not work. Land could not be successfully exchanged
for peace. Thus Labor, Kadima, and Likud — the three main parties — all accepted the same
basic policy framework, ending the old debate begun in 1967 and carried on through the end
of the peace process between those ready to trade territory for peace and those who wanted to
keep territory. Danny Seaman, director of the Foreign Press Offi ce, supplied a summary of the
Israeli national consensus in a November 2010 interview:
There were certain “truths” that we were told: That if we adopt UN resolutions, there'll
be peace. If we recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination, there'll be peace.
If we remove settlements, there'll be peace. And over the past 25 years, there's been a
progression in the Israeli position: Israel recognized the PLO as the only legitimate rep-
resentative of the Palestinian people; relinquished territory; removed settlements. Re-
garding Lebanon, Israel fulfi lled all the UN resolutions. Yet the end result was not the
peace that we were promised. . . . Peace is a strategic necessity for the State of Israel. But
. . . these “truths” that we were promised never came about. On the contrary, it only
increased violence, increased extremism.
Such thinking was reinforced by the emergence of an Iran-led Islamist bloc that was even
more intransigent toward Israel, openly denied that the Holocaust had happened, and called
for Israel's extermination. Iran's accelerating drive to obtain nuclear weapons and support for
Hamas and Hizballah were additional factors making the Iran issue the top priority in the
Israeli debate. This, too, encouraged consensus in Israel.
Ensuring U.S. and Western support to counter Iran's drive toward obtaining nuclear
weapons was also very important to Israel's strategic interests, especially since Tehran's lead-
ers spoke frequently about wiping Israel off the map and sponsored Hamas, Hizballah, and
other terrorist groups that attacked Israel. Israel's primary enemies were no longer neighbor-
ing Arab states, Arab nationalist movements, and the PLO, but rather Islamist movements
and Iran. Thus, after so many years of peacemaking efforts, the emphasis was now on national
defense. The status quo seemed more desirable than before and — despite real concerns over
Iran — sustainable.
The sense of a renewed existential threat, deriving from Iranian nuclear ambitions, dimin-
ished deterrence after the Lebanon War of 2006, and criticism of the leadership from within
Kadima and Labor led to the rapid revival of the fortunes of Likud and its leader, Netanyahu.
That Netanyahu was widely judged to have been a very successful fi nance minister in privatiz-
ing large elements of the economy helped rehabilitate him as a potential leader. Events in the
Gaza Strip reinforced all of these trends.
HAMAS SEIZES THE GAZA STRIP AND ISRAEL RESPONDS
In June 2007, Hamas defeated Fatah-led forces in the Gaza Strip and seized control of the
entire territory. The existence of two Palestinian entities now made the idea of successful ne-
gotiations to resolve the Israel-Palestinian confl ict seem even less likely. It also, however, made
