AHRON SHAPIRO

ISRAEL has been a hive of activity in the new millennium. In fact, narrowing down the key events of the past decade to just 10 major crossroads is challenging.

The order in which these turning points are listed below should not be considered as indicative of their importance. Instead, they are ranked chronologically for the sake of clarity.

1. Camp David peace talks fail, July 2000

ISRAELI prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Yasser Arafat meet at Camp David, as US President Bill Clinton attempts to re-create the magic that led to the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt brokered at the same location more than 20 years earlier. After two weeks, the summit concludes without an agreement.

The failure of the talks leads to two outcomes: the Palestinians’ Second Intifada, which begins in September of that year, and the electoral defeat of Barak at the hands of Likud’s Ariel Sharon in February 2001.

The prime ministerial election, held shortly after Barak’s last-gasp effort for a deal with Arafat at Taba, is Israel’s last separate election for prime minister and the only one held independently of Knesset elections. It leaves Sharon in control of a Knesset that is still dominated by the Labour Party and leads to a shaky national unity government.

Finally, two years later, Sharon’s victory is complete when Knesset elections are held and Likud emerges triumphant over Labour and its short-lived leader, former Haifa mayor Amram Mitzna.

2 . The Second Intifada, September 2000

ARAFAT, disappointed with the outcome of the Camp David talks, initiates the Second Intifada later the same year. The fighting, which ebbs and flows over the next few years, includes a wave of deadly terror attacks and even gunfire directed at a Jewish neighbourhood in Jerusalem. Arafat is placed under siege in Ramallah.

Major outcomes of the Second Intifada are the accelerated construction of the Security Fence between Israel and the West Bank and the replacement of negotiation as a peace strategy with unilateralism among top political thinkers in the Knesset.

The Security Fence, a target of scathing international criticism, does what it was intended to. Terrorism - especially the number of suicide bombings that had been an ever-present danger in Israel for nearly a decade -– declines precipitously.

In the face of ongoing hostilities, a quartet of powers – the European Union, Russia, the United States and the United Nations (UN) – unveil a “road map” for peace, which Sharon accepts, delineating a peace process that demands the Palestinians cease violence and Israel stop building new settlements, with the unwritten understanding that building within current settlements is permitted to continue. Implementation of the “road map” occurs in fits and starts over the next several years.

3 . Yasser Arafat dies, November 2004

ARAFAT’S health declines sharply in his last days and he dies in Paris after being flown there for emergency medical treatment. Arafat’s death, and the installation of his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, begins a process of weakening of the PA’s control over its territories and, in tandem, diminishes the PA’s ability to deliver a peace acceptable to all Palestinians.

4. The Gaza disengagement, August 2005

IN light of the failure of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and the advent of the Second Intifada, prime minister Sharon decides that Israel will take unilateral steps that he believes will improve Israel’s security and international standing.

Adopted by the government in June 2004 and implemented in August 2005, the controversial Gaza disengagement brings about the dismantling of 21 settlements in the Israeli settlement bloc of Gush Katif, as well as four isolated West Bank settlements.

During this tumultuous time, there are major reshufflings in the government, including Sharon’s reorganisation of his government as a national unity coalition in January 2005. Likud stalwart Binyamin Netanyahu resigns from his post as finance minister in protest, shortly before the evacuations commence, warning that the withdrawal will lead to an increase in terrorism.

5. Kadima is born, November 2005

THE painful images of the disengagement resonate deeply with Likud’s right-wing base. In early November, the Labour Party ousts party leader Shimon Peres in favour of Amir Peretz, and leaves the national unity government, calling for new elections.

Shortly afterwards, Sharon splits the Likud and forms a new party with both the Likud and Labour rebels to continue his vision of unilateral withdrawal and realignment, which promises to be directed deeper into the West Bank in the next phase. A massive stroke ends Sharon’s career and throws into question the future of the fledgling party.

Former Jerusalem mayor and Likudnik Ehud Olmert assumes the role of party leader, in deference to the majority of Kadima members, who were Likud members. Kadima wins the March 2006 elections. Netanyahu’s Likud, hard-hit by the split, heads to the opposition with fewer than half of the legislators it had in the previous Knesset.

6. Second Lebanon War, July 2006

THE outbreak of cross-border fighting into Lebanon after a Hezbollah attack on an Israeli patrol and the kidnapping of two soldiers put talk about a West Bank disengagement on Kadima’s backburner. The war, which lasts for 34 days, is seen by most Israelis as a poorly planned and poorly executed debacle.

Israel is subject to long-range missile barrages that affect the entire northern section of the country, including the urban metropolis of Haifa.

The UN Security Council issues UN Resolution 1701 in an effort to end the hostilities. The resolution, which is approved by both Lebanese and Israeli governments, calls for an Israeli withdrawal together with the disarming of Hezbollah by the Lebanese government. While the former demand is carried out to a tee, it becomes clear in the following months that the latter directive has been entirely ignored.

Amid a public outcry, the Israeli government sets up the independent Winograd Commission Report, which determines the war to have been a “missed opportunity” that lacked proper objectives and concludes that the “war ended without a defined military victory”.

The bodies of the kidnapped soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, are returned to Israel in a prisoner swap in 2008.

7. Hamas seizes Gaza, June 2007

THE writing on the wall is already there once Hamas emerges victorious in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections of January 2006. However, the coup de grace for the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) hegemony over Palestinian affairs is the Hamas military uprising in Gaza.

While Hamas in Gaza has achieved a certain amount of military autonomy before -– their kidnapping and control over the fate of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit predates the coup by nearly a year –- it is not until the fighting in June that the PLO’s PA loses complete control over the Gaza Strip. Israel and Egypt join together in a blockade of goods into Gaza to apply pressure against the Hamas regime. The import of humanitarian aid into Gaza, however, continues with the support of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

The deteriorating situation in Gaza, including the Shalit kidnapping, incessant missile attacks on southern Israeli villages and the Hamas uprising in the years following the disengagement, lessens popular support for Kadima’s vision of future unilateral withdrawals.

8. Gaza war, December 2008

THE intolerable situation in southern Israeli communities such as Sderot, from years of Hamas’ Kassam rockets, precipitates IDF action into Gaza. The three-week incursion, entitled Operation Cast Lead, is intended to curtail rocket attacks and deter future terror attacks, while at the same taking unprecedented precautions to avoid causing Gazan civilian deaths.

The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) assigns South African Justice Richard Goldstone to investigate the operation, under the presumption that the IDF had committed war crimes. Israel refuses to cooperate with the report on the basis of the HRC’s history of bias against Israel. The report is released in September 2009 to widespread Israeli condemnation.

9. Netanyahu emerges as prime minister, February 2009

IN an unusual twist, Kadima, under the leadership of Tzipi Livni, secures the most number of seats in the Knesset, but Livni is passed over for the premiership because the party’s left-wing allies fare too poorly to assist in forming a government.

The Likud Party, which suffered a severe setback only three years earlier, comes back with a strong second-place finish and President Shimon Peres gives Netanyahu the nod to form a government. Netanyahu shuns forming a right-wing ­government, instead choosing a unity configuration with the inclusion of a weakened Labour Party, which since mid-2007 has been headed once again by Barak.

10. Barack Obama turns the screws, June 2009

US President Barack Obama, with his speech to the Muslim world broadcast from Cairo, ends the near lock-step coordination of US and Israel policy that has typified the relations between the countries under his predecessor, George W Bush. In the speech, Obama demands publicly that Israel endorse a Palestinian state and impose a total settlement freeze.

Netanyahu responds to US pressure with partial gestures -– an endorsement of a demilitarised Palestinian state and a temporary, 10-month settlement freeze that also allows for the completion of existing construction.

He also orders a dramatic easing of constraints on Palestinian life in the West Bank and an increase of humanitarian supplies to Gaza. In spite of these unilateral concessions, the PA refuses to restart negotiations, saying the moves are insufficient.

Many in Israel express the belief that Netanyahu’s pliant attitude regarding concessions is linked with his desire to maintain strong US support to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons; an issue that has been growing in urgency since anti-Israel and vocally pro-nuclear firebrand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took over the presidency of Iran from Mohammad Khatami in August, 2005. Heading into 2010, most Israelis strongly believe this issue is an existential threat trumping all others.