Fifteenth Knesset

Election for Prime Minister

← 1996 17 May 1999 2001 →
Candidate Ehud Barak Benjamin Netanyahu Party One Israel Likud Popular vote 1,791,020 1,402,474 Percentage 56.1% 43.9%
Prime Minister before election Benjamin Netanyahu Likud Elected Prime Minister Ehud Barak One Israel

Benjamin Netanyahu
Likud

Ehud Barak
One Israel

Early general elections for both the Prime Minister and the Knesset were held in Israel on 17 May 1999 following a vote of no confidence in the government; the incumbent Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ran for re-election.

This election was only the second time in Israeli history an election had been held for the Prime Minister's post in addition to elections for the Knesset. The first such election, in 1996 had been an extremely tight contest between Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu on the right, and Labor's Shimon Peres on the left; the right had won by less than one percent (about 29,000 votes).

Ehud Barak, promising to storm the citadels of peace regarding negotiations with the Palestinians and withdraw from Lebanon by July 2000, won the election in a landslide victory.

In the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, although the Likud government had negotiated the Wye River Memorandum and it had passed the Knesset overwhelmingly in November 1998, subsequent negotiations with the Palestinians were going badly. The lack of progress had alienated support for the government on the left, as well as on its right. The left claimed negotiations were moving too slowly, while the more extreme right were unhappy with the contemplated territorial concessions included in the memorandum itself.

The Likud-Gesher-Tzomet alliance had fallen apart, with more members leaving Likud to set up Herut – The National Movement and the Centre Party.

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Wikipedia