The Labor Party's dominance of Israeli politics…

The Labor Party's dominance of Israeli politics ends, to general surprise, in the May 1977 elections.

The Likud Bloc forms a ruling coalition government for the first time in Israel's history.

Likud gains forty-three seats, Labor drops to thirty-two seats, down by nineteen from the 1973 figure.

Likud's supporters consist of disaffected middle-class elements alienated by the series of scandals, many new immigrants from the Soviet Union, and large numbers of defecting Oriental Jews. (Hereafter, Likud will oppose the Labor Party in essentially a two-party system, but it will depend on coalitions with minor parties, especially those of a religious ultraconservative or nationalist persuasion.)

The Sephardim support Likud in large numbers.

In addition, a new "clean government" party draws votes from Labor, and its leader, Yigael Yadin, an eminent archaeologist and a hero of the 1948 war, join the cabinet.

Also included in Begin's cabinet are Ezer Weizman (nephew of Chaim Weizman, the renowned scientist and Zionist leader who was Israel's first President), an air force commander in 1967 and architect of the Likud political strategy, and, to the shock of many Laborites, Moshe Dayan, who agrees to become foreign minister.

Begin also attracts the National Religious Party to his coalition.

Yitzhak Shamir, first elected to the Knesset in 1973, had in March 1975 been elected chair of the party executive of Herut; he now becomes speaker of the Knesset.