Chapter 4 exposes the growing contradiction in Israel’s engagement foreign policy stance, which, in certain respects, was advancing. By September 1995, Israel and the PLO had concluded the Oslo II interim agreement; Israel’s emerging ties with Arab countries in the Gulf and the Maghreb were continuing; and negotiations with Syria at an ambassadorial level and between the respective countries’ militaries’ chiefs of staff were maintained. At the same time, the domestic challenges to Israel’s policy of engagement intensified, prompting a flawed response from the Rabin government. Amid deteriorating security, Israel deployed coercive measures against the Palestinians, undermining the political standing of the Palestinian leadership, economy, and public support for negotiations with Israel. Nonetheless, terrorist attacks against Israelis continued, weakening the domestic legitimacy of engagement in Israel and fueling domestic opposition. Shifting the lens to Syria, the government attempted to sway domestic opposition to negotiations via public diplomacy with Syria’s obstinate and hostile President al-Assad, which backfired as al-Assad rejected all Israeli overtures. The chapter ends by uncovering how the failure to produce a breakthrough with Syria influenced Israel’s Iran policy, highlighting that Israel’s foreign policy of engagement remained vulnerable and incomplete.

Chapter 2 examines Israel’s foreign policy amid the rise to power, in 1992, of the Labour party under the leadership of Yitzhak Rabin. It explains how Israel redirected its foreign policy from entrenchment to engagement, which rested on three pillars: scaling down the Israeli occupation, relinquishing territory in exchange for peace agreements with the Arab states, and putting a premium on diplomacy in Israel’s Middle Eastern foreign policy while keeping military force as a viable foreign policy tool. The chapter accounts for the decision-making process during key events such as the deportation of 415 Hamas members, Rabin’s failed peace proposal to Syria, via the ‘deposit’, and the decision to launch the Oslo peace process with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). The chapter adds to the literature in two ways. First, by providing new information on Israeli foreign policy decision-making towards the peace processes with Syria and the PLO. Second, by tracing how and why Prime Minister Rabin and Foreign Minister Peres imposed engagement, as Israel’s preferred post-Cold War foreign policy stance, on the government and the security network.

Chapter 7 traces the rise to power of Binyamin Netanyahu and the ‘presidential’ decision-making structure he established to bypass his ministerial colleagues whom he regarded as his rivals. It explores key events, including the opening of the Hasmonean Tunnel, the October 1996 Washington summit, the signing of the revised Hebron agreement, the construction in Har Homa/Jabal Abu-Ghneim, and the protracted delay in the implementation of the Oslo II agreement. The chapter provides new information concerning the decision-making process in relation to each of these events. In addition, it exposes, for the first time, that Prime Minister Netanyahu rejected an offer from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs to replace the Oslo process with Madrid peace conference negotiation framework, which Likud was a part of. It is argued that Israel’s foreign policy reflected Prime Minister Netanyahu’s fundamental opposition to Israel’s engagement foreign policy stance, which he successfully frustrated.