Yitzhak Rabin has served as defense minister…

Yitzhak Rabin has served as defense minister in the Labor-Likud coalition governments from 1984 to 1990, responding forcefully to the uprising by Palestinians in the occupied territories.

The International Red Cross estimates that more than eight hundred Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces, more than two hundred of whom were under the age of sixteen, by mid-1990.

Some sixteen thousand Palestinians are in prison.

By contrast, fewer than fifty Israelis have been killed.

Some hundreds of Palestinians in the occupied territories, accused of being collaborators with Israel, are killed by their compatriots.

Political paralysis grips Israel.

Shamir has continued the Begin policy of settling Jews throughout the West Bank, hoping to isolate the Arab towns and villages that might form the basis for a Palestinian state.

Few Israelis responds to this initiative until minister of industry and trade Ariel Sharon, who returns in 1990 to Shamir's cabinet as housing minister, begins subsidizing residential communities that are within easy commuting distance of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, where housing is scarce and expensive.

After Shamir's government falls in 1990, Shamir eventually succeeds in forming his own coalition government (without Labor), including several representatives of ultraconservative groups.