Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: anniversari

Il 14 maggio 1977 la vittoria elettorale del Likud portava finalmente
a compimento il progetto sionista, ponendo le premesse per fare di
Israele una nazione liberale. Am Israel Hai
 
http://www.jpost.com/Features/InThespotlight/Article.aspx?id=269746
 
 
 
For the first 29 years of Israel’s existence, one party – predecessors
of the Labor party – dominated the young country’s politics and a
narrow range of political ideologies ruled its governing coalitions.
In 1977 that all changed.
 
On May 17, 1977, the Likud ousted the long-dominant Alignment bloc for
the first time. In doing so, Israel’s first non-leftist prime
minister, Menachem Begin, forever changed the face and dynamics of
Israeli democracy. Whereas the Likud and its predecessor Herut had
played a constant opposition role in the first three decades of the
state, from that day on, the Israeli political system would be subject
to true electoral competition and its governments’ ideologies began
moving back and forth in future elections.
 
Although the Likud’s ideological roots were and continue to be tied to
the ideology of Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Zionism, the party’s
1977 election victory was the result of a much wider revolt against
the ruling political elites of the Labor party, specifically its
ethnic makeup. With immigration having changed the face of the country
since its establishment in 1948, by the late 1970s, Mizrahi and
Sephardic Jews from Arab and eastern countries comprised a majority of
the country’s Jewish population. The Labor Party’s predecessors who
had been in power until that time, an elite political class groomed by
David Ben-Gurion, were predominantly Ashkenazi Jews.
 
Having lacked representation that addressed their specific interests
and facing significant discrimination since their arrival in the
country in its first two decades, Mizrahi and Oriental Jews flocked to
the Likud in the late 1970s and early 1980s. With its political
campaigns targeting socio-economic grievances specific to those
communities, by the Likud’s second election victory in 1981, Oriental
Jews composed 70 percent of the party’s votes, which ensured it a
second term in power.
 
In his 1977 victory speech, Begin described the election results as “a
turning point in the history of the Jewish people.” Likud-led
governments in the coming years would indeed change the country and
its future, bearing responsibility for three highly significant
developments.
 
The first event was Menachem Begin reaching a peace treaty with Egypt.
Although many of the events leading up to the treaty can be chalked
off as circumstantial and more related to timing than the personality
and ideology of Israel’s leadership, others point to Begin’s harder
line with the Arab states having presented a unique opportunity. A
common anecdote in Israeli politics is that because of its hard line,
only the ideological Right is capable of making peace with the
country’s neighbors, although Yitzhak Rabin’s peace deal with Jordan
punched some holes in that theory.
 
The second event was the decision to invade Lebanon in 1978. A day
before the invasion, following the deadliest terror attack ever to
take place in Israel, Begin invoked his Jabotinsky-inspired hardline
and unapologetic attitudes regarding security. Addressing the Knesset,
he foretold of his plans: “Gone forever are the days when Jewish blood
could be shed with impunity.”
 
But the difference between the subsequent invasion of Lebanon and
Israel’s previous wars was that it did not come in response to an
invasion or a clear casus belli. It would later be called the first
war that was not launched by necessity and was also Israel’s first war
that did not lead to a clear victory.
 
The third development would not come for another two decades. Having
been swept out of power a number of times since Begin’s dramatic
upheaval of the political status quo in 1977, a Likud victory 19 years
later led to a different type of dramatic change – in the country’s
economic system.
 
Faced with economic stagnation and overwhelming inflation, Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s first term was marked by the economic
changes he made, which forever changed the country’s socialist legacy
and moved the country toward a free market economy. Many of those
policies and governing ideologies remain dominant in the way the
country’s economy is run to this day. Some of Netanyahu’s initial
moves in his first premiership were to slash social subsidies that had
been a hallmark of the young state, attempts to weaken the country’s
powerful unions and to privatize much of the state-owned industry that
had dominated Israel’s economy since before its founding nearly 50
years earlier.
 
The Likud upheaval of Israeli politics in 1977 had far-reaching
consequences for Israel, some positive, some negative, and the jury is
still out on most of them, considering the state’s short history and
changes that continue to take place. Perhaps the most significant and
lasting consequence of the 1977 elections, however, was the shift in
the country’s political power dynamics that introduced Israelis to a
viable and capable opposition that not only opposed the dominant
party’s policies and ideology, but also became an alternative.

 a compimento il progetto sionista
 
non era stata la liberazione di Al Quds 10 anni prima?