Year In Review
A New Dawn
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert are shown dur-
Rescuers work in the Haifa train depot after a Hezbollah rocket killed eight rail
ing a meeting Jan. 4. Later that night, Sharon suffered a massive stroke and Olmert
workers and injured 19 on July 16.
became acting prime minister.
For Israel, 5766 proved to be a
particularly turbulent year.
Leslie Susser
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Jerusalem
T
he Jewish year 5766
was one of the most
dramatic in Israel's his-
tory:
It saw a sitting prime minister
dismantle his ruling party and
then suffer a massive stroke that
left him comatose; a terrorist
group that refused to recognize
Israel's existence elected to the
pinnacle of Palestinian power;
and a war with another terrorist
group in which more than 100
rockets slammed into Israeli
cities and towns nearly every
day for more than a month. And
that's just for starters.
Facing intense opposi-
tion within his Likud Party,
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
broke away from the Likud in
November 2005 to form the
Kadima Party. The move signifi-
cantly altered Israel's political
landscape, placing Kadima and
the Labor Party at the center of
the political spectrum, with par-
ties to the left and right seem-
ingly marginalized.
Riding a wave of popularity,
Sharon seemed certain to be re-
elected by a huge margin, with a
mandate to continue his policy
of withdrawal from Palestinian
territory following the unilateral
withdrawal from the Gaza Strip
and northern West Bank in the
summer of 2005.
But it was not to be. After an
initial, small stroke in December,
Sharon suffered a major stroke
Jan. 4 and fell into a deep coma
from which he has not emerged.
His deputy, Ehud Olmert, took
over as acting prime minister,
paving the way for Olmert's elec-
tion to the premiership in late
March on a promise to complete
the process of separating Israel
and the Palestinians by enacting
a massive unilateral withdrawal
from almost all of the West
Bank.
There also were precedent-
setting elections among the
Palestinians: On Jan. 25, the
fundamentalist Hamas swept
to power, ousting the secular
Fatah Party after almost 40 years
of uninterrupted rule. Israel
refused to have any dealings
with the Hamas government
unless it recognized Israel's
right to exist, accepted previous
Israeli-Palestinian accords and
renounced violence.
Most of the international corn-
munity backed the Israeli posi-
tion, severed diplomatic contacts
and . cut off aid when Hamas
refused to meet the demands.
The result was violence, with the
Palestinians taking advantage of
the end of occupation in Gaza to
launch daily rocket barrages at
Israeli towns near the border.
Violence escalated after
Palestinian gunmen from
Hamas and other factions killed
two Israeli soldiers and kid-
napped a third, Gilad Shalit, on
June 25.
On the northern border,
Hezbollah, a terrorist group
financed and armed by Iran
and Syria and with seats in
the Lebanese government, had
built up an enormous rocket
capability after Israel's unilat-
eral withdrawal from southern
Lebanon in May 2000. Shortly
after Hamas' capture of Shalit,
Hezbollah opened a second front
with a cross-border raid July 12
that killed eight Israeli soldiers.
Two others — Ehud Goldwasser
and Eldad Regev — were kid-
napped and dragged back to
Lebanon.
Hezbollah thought Israel's
answer would be the sort of lim-
ited, pinprick responses it had
carried out after other Hezbollah
attacks over the past six years,
but in this case the group badly
miscalculated. Israel launched
airstrikes against Hezbollah tar-
gets and Lebanese infrastructure
and called up ground forces for
a possible land invasion.
Olmert was determined to
change a situation in which
Hezbollah felt it could attack
Israeli soldiers with impunity,
confident that Israel would not
take strong retaliatory action for
fear of attack from the 14,000
or so rockets that Hezbollah
had trained on Israeli cities and
towns.
There were other strategic
considerations too: Israeli mili-
tary planners saw Hezbollah as
the long arm of Iran, building up
its rocket power to attack Israel
if the Jewish state or the United
States took military action to
prevent Iran from obtaining
nuclear weapons. The Israeli war
effort was aimed at restoring
Israel's deterrent power, remov-
ing the Hezbollah rocket threat
and creating conditions for the
return of the abducted soldiers.
The initial air strikes were
highly successful: In just 39
minutes on the night of July 12,
the Israeli air force destroyed
most of Hezbollah's Iranian-
made Zilzal long-range rockets,
which were believed capable of
hitting Tel Aviv. Over the next
few days, the air force reduced
A New Dawn on page 72
September 21 . 2006
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