An upheaval has taken place in the political landscape in Israel since 2005, with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to design and swiftly execute a disengagement plan from the Gaza Strip. This was followed by Sharon’s move to shatter his own parliamentary majority party by creating Kadima, a new party, with an explicit agenda for further withdrawal from the Occupied West Bank. Sharon’s sudden illness and the subsequent turnover of power to Ehud Olmert occurred during the early 2006 election that ended with the victory of Kadima and a significant decrease in popular support for Likud. Subsequent negotiations led to the establishment of a broad coalition government based on the political platform of unilateral withdrawal.

At the regional level, a surge of violence led to the intensification of the conflict between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories and to a full scale war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon during 2006. The military’s performance in the war and the response of civilian institutions to the emergency situation in the north of the country revealed serious deficiencies.

This generated negative public opinion and resulted in the establish­ment of an official commission to investigate the performance of the military and government during the war. Its initial re­sults confirmed public criticism and led to the resignation of the Minister of Defence and the debilitation of an already weakened government. As a result, the political platform on which the government was elected succumbed in the face of the new challenges, leaving the Israeli public feeling disoriented and without clear leadership. This allowed for the re-emergence of security concerns as the key focus of Israeli politics.