| Summary/Abstract |
This article discusses the causes and processes that drove Menachem Begin and his Gahal party into the Israeli cabinet during the three-week waiting period preceding the June 1967 war (or Six Day War as it is commonly known). A close examination of Begin’s behaviour reveals a calculated political move aimed at exploiting deep processes within the Israeli political establishment in general, and its right-wing factions in particular. This sheds fresh light on a number of key events preceding the war, notably Prime Minister Levi Eshkol’s surrender of the defence portfolio to Moshe Dayan, as well as on the deeper processes that led within a decade to the Likud’s (Gahal’s successor) rise to power, for the first time in Israel’s history.
|