The Black Years of Soviet Jewry culminated in the Doctors’ Plot of January 1953. The press campaign, arrests, imprisonment and general persecution of Soviet Jews since 1948 reached its nadir when senior doctors – the majority of whom were Jewish – were charged with attempting to poison the leaders of the Kremlin. In the USSR, the composer Mieczysław Weinberg and the leading diplomat Ivan Maisky were arrested. Jewish communal leaders in Hungary and East Germany were arrested. Ana Pauker, Romania’s former minister of foreign affairs, was arrested in February.

Under Mikhail Gorbachev, the mass emigration of Soviet Jews began. It accelerated with the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

In 1993, Rabin and Arafat signed the Oslo Accords in a Washington ceremony despite opposition from within both sides. Arafat returned to Gaza while Hussein signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994.

In 1995, Rabin was assassinated by a member of the far Right, following a peace rally and Shimon Peres succeeded him. However Peres was unexpectedly defeated by the new leader of the Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu in the 1996 election.

The election of Netanyahu and the rise of Palestinian Islamism and suicide bombing effectively stalled any progress towards a solution. Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad did not recognise Israel and opposed the Oslo Accords.

The Hebron Accords in 1997 divided streets in Hebron between Palestinian Arabs and Jewish settlers. The Wye Plantation Accord between Netanyahu and Arafat promised a return of 13% of the West Bank to the Palestinians.

Discord in the Likud about the agreement led to an election in 1999 in which Netanyahu was defeated. Labour’s Ehud Barak became prime minister and Sharon became leader of the Likud.

Two factors dominated Israeli politics in an election year – the deep unpopularity of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the pivotal position of Shas, the Mizrahi party, which held the balance of power in the coalition.

Following Arafat’s renunciation of terrorism in Geneva at the end of 1988, accompanied by a discussion about its actual meaning, Robert Pelletreau, the US ambassador in Tunis, was instructed to formally commence a dialogue with local PLO representatives. Arafat simultaneously instructed the Intifada on the West Bank and Gaza to continue. This sparked division both in Israel and within the PLO.

So wrote Primo Levi after he had returned from his imprisonment by the Nazis. The poem was addressed to those ‘who live secure in your warm houses’. While the Jews of the United States and the United Kingdom had suffered hardship and austerity, they remained at liberty. Thousands fought in the Allied armies to defeat Nazism. In the weeks before VE Day, the British and the Canadians had liberated Bergen-Belsen and the Americans had taken control of Dachau. While there were no gas chambers to carry out mass extermination in these camps, the landscape of bestiality was shown to London cinema audiences. The images of stacked dead bodies and living emaciated ones shocked all. While British soldiers wearing handkerchiefs on their faces shovelled the bodies into pits, the stench of death permeated those who bore witness – even on the silver screen. The Allies may have won the war, but the Jews certainly lost it.

Ehud Olmert was acquitted of the corruption charges that had prompted his resignation as prime minister and leader of Kadima. He was originally charged with fraud, breach of trust, tax evasion and falsifying corporate records in the Talansky and Rishon Tours cases, but was found guilty only of breach of trust in the Investment Centre case. Olmert’s long-time office chief, Shula Zaken, was convicted on two counts of fraudulently obtaining benefits, fraud and breach of trust in the Rishon Tours case.

The rise of the Likud as Israel’s first political party also meant the rise of the controversial Ariel Sharon. Passed over as commander in chief of the Israel Defence Forces, he became Defence Minister under Begin.

The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 divided Israel with large demonstrations and protests.The siege of Beirut and the subsequent massacres in Palestinian refugee camps by Lebanese Christian forces brought demands for Sharon’s dismissal through his conduct of the invasion. Sharon was isolated in cabinet, found guilty by the Kahan Commission and moved aside as a minister. The PLO however moved out of Lebanon forced to relocate to Tunis and other locations.

Begin resigned in 1983 and was succeeded by Yitzhak Shamir, a veteran leader of Lehi (’the Stern Gang’).

There were numerous attacks by different Palestinian groups on civilian targets. Following the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran now strongly supported the Palestinian cause. In 1981, Israel bombed the Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad to prevent Saddam Hussein gaining the possibility of manufacturing nuclear weapons.

In 1988, King Hussein relinquished any responsibility for the West Bank, leaving the Palestinians responsible for their own affairs. The PLO made the first tentative steps towards a two state solution - albeit using ambiguous language.

A non-lethal uprising - an Intifada - by the Palestinians took place at the end of 1987. It gave rise to an enhanced cooperation between the Israeli and Palestinian peace camps.

Barak’s inability to cement a second Camp David agreement and Arafat’s growing fear of Hamas led to a second Intifada. Unlike the first Intifada, this one was led by the Islamists and was characterised by suicide bombings and attacks on Israeli civilians.

The election for the office of prime minister led to the defeat of Barak and his replacement by Sharon who embarked on a policy to crush the Intifada and to isolate Arafat.

The Intifada effectively ended with the targeted killings by the Israelis of the Hamas spiritual mentor, Sheikh Yassin, his successors and several other Palestinian leaders. Arafat himself died in 2004.

Sharon’s espousal of a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 led to a split in the Likud and a realignment of Israeli politics. The formation of Kadima under Sharon led to figures such as Peres joining the new party. Netanyahu who had led a privatisation initiative while Finance Minister under Sharon now became the head of a Likud rump.

Sharon’s stroke in 2006 led to Kadima’s Ehud Olmert becoming prime minister. Olmert’s unsuccessful invasion of Lebanon and his being mired in scandals and court cases, led to his resignation. Bolstered by Olmert’s Annapolis agreement with the Palestinians, he was succeeded by Tsipi Livni. An election was held in 2009 in which Kadima emerged as the largest party. However she was unable to form a coalition due mainly to ultra-orthodox parties and far Right parties. Netanyahu once again became prime minister.

Operation Cast Lead was launched against Gaza in an attempt to prevent Qassam missiles being fired into Israel.

In early January, the ten-member inner cabinet met to discuss the stalemate in the talks in Nakura between the Israelis and the Lebanese on Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, following the invasion of 1982. Israel argued that UNIFIL should take over responsibility for security between the Zahrani and Awali rivers, while the South Lebanon Army (SLA) would patrol the area between the Litani River and the Israeli border. Lebanon did not recognise the Israeli-backed Christian militia, the SLA, and insisted on a more limited role for UNIFIL.

The political fallout from the second Lebanon war continued when a judgement of Olmert’s conduct was published in the Winograd Commission Report at the end of January. The Commission found that while he had acted in good faith, the military operation failed in achieving its goal to inflict a decisive defeat on Hezbollah. Within a few weeks, the head of Hezbollah’s military activities, Imad Mughniyeh, was killed by a car bomb in Damascus. He was wanted by the Argentinian authorities for the attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992. In June, Samir Kuntar was released in exchange for the bodies of Regev and Goldwasser whose abduction and killing had sparked off the war. In 1979, Kuntar had left Tyre, sailed down the coast to Nahariya and been involved in the killing of members of the Haran family in their apartment.

David Levy resigned as foreign minister at the beginning of the year and pulled his Gesher faction out of the coalition. He accused the government of ‘stonewalling’ on foreign policy and stalling on social policy. He was the third minister to resign from Netanyahu’s administration. This left Netanyahu with a majority of two seats in the Knesset, 61 to 59.

In mid-January, a conference of thirteen Arab states in Cairo discussed measures to counter Israel’s water development project of pumping water from the River Jordan and the Sea of Galilee to the Negev in the south of Israel. Mekorot, the company in charge, began to test pump and pipe pressures along the 70-mile carrier to the central distribution station near Petah Tiqvah. More than 30 billion gallons per annum would be taken from the Sea of Galilee initially and then increased to 75 billion within a few years.

The new government, elected in 2015, took a turn to the Right when Yisrael Beiteinu joined the government rather than Isaac Herzog’s Zionist Union. Two ministers resigned, the defence minister Moshe Yaalon (Likud) and environment minister Avi Gabai (Kulanu). Avigdor Lieberman was appointed in Yaalon’s place.

The Yom Kippur war in 1973 ended more as a draw than an Israeli victory. Unlike the war in 1967, Israel suffered heavy losses and although a ceasefire was organised as the Israelis marched on Cairo, it was close-run thing in the early stages.

The fallout from the war also marked a changeover in generations when Yitzhak Rabin succeeded Golda Meir as prime minister in 1974.

The Yom Kippur war did provide the space for the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, to make peace with Israel. Sadat visited Jerusalem in 1977 and spoke in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. In 1979, Egypt and Israel signed the peace accord, the Camp David agreement. It did not however solve the problem of the Palestinians.

The Labour party continued to decline amidst further splits in 1977. At the 1977 election, Menahem Begin’s Likud emerged as the leading party. Israel had switched for the first time from the Left to the Right.

The campaign to elect a prime minister – as opposed to voting for political parties – pitched a weakened Barak against an internationally controversial Ariel Sharon. Barak’s election campaign referred to Sharon’s part in the Lebanon war of 1982 and to the killing of Palestinians in the camps at Sabra and Shatilla, but as his walk on the Temple Mount in September the year before had demonstrated, history had moved on.

The Oslo Accord of September 1993 came close to collapse because of the attacks on Israelis by Hamas during 1994. The killing of twenty-nine worshippers in the al-Ibrahimi mosque within the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron caused a profound reaction within the Arab and Muslim worlds. Its perpetrator, Baruch (Benjamin) Goldstein, originally from Brooklyn’s Bensenhurst neighbourhood, was associated with Meir Kahane’s Kach. His action was widely condemned by Israeli Jews including both the Ashkenazi and Sephardi Chief Rabbis. There were demonstrations in Arab population centres in Israel such as Jaffa and Nazareth. There were also disturbances in East Jerusalem and on the Temple Mount. Syria, Lebanon and Jordan suspended the bilateral negotiations in Washington.

The spiralling inflation that had plagued the economy led to the resignation of the finance minister, Yigal Hurwitz, who wished to delay a rise in teachers’ salaries until April 1982. Hurwitz, the leader of the eight-member La’am faction of the Likud, had followed a free market policy of cuts in government subsidies while promulgating a period of austerity. Within days of his resignation, El Al employees staged a national strike amidst widespread labour disputes. Moreover, three La’am members simultaneously left the government coalition and thereby the prospect of early elections loomed. While Begin’s coalition appeared to be crumbling, the NRP opposed early elections because one of its representatives, the religious affairs minister Aharon Abuhatzeira, had been charged with taking bribes, while another, Yosef Burg, had been accused of blocking an investigation into financial irregularities in the Ministry of the Interior.