ABSTRACT
In the first decades after the state’s founding, a center-left coalition led by Mapai (the Land of Israel Workers’ Party) governed Israel. The Israeli right emerged victorious for the first time only in the 1977 general election and again in 1981. In the elections of 1984 and 1988, the outcome was not decisive for either the right or left camps. A narrow victory for the left in 1992 produced a government led by Yitzhak Rabin, which signed the Oslo Accords and recognized the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) as the representative of the Palestinian people. The left’s success on that occasion can be seen in part as a reaction by Israelis to the first Intifada and Israel’s inability to crush the popular uprising by Palestinians.
