1992

Domestic politics in Israel overshadowed foreign policy developments. The decision of Tehiyah, a coalition partner in the Shamir government to leave the government, forced the prime minister to call for early elections, which were due to be held on 23 June 1992. The peace process continued as a number of rounds of talks were held with the Arab parties in Washington. But there was effectively little progress. All parties were waiting for the Israelis to cast their vote to determine the nature of the next government. Syria insisted that Israel give a prior commitment to withdraw from the Golan before it was prepared to discuss the nature of peace and their concept of normalization. The Lebanese were not prepared to move until an agreement had been reached between Israel and Syria. Jordan waited for the resolution of the Palestinian issue and the Palestinians, contrary to the terms of reference of the negotiations, wanted to know at the early stage of the talks what would be the nature of the final status of the areas. Israel stressed the point that it was prepared to discuss only the proposed transition period and the autonomy. The deadlock was not broken by 23 June when Israel went to the polls.

Relations with the United States underwent a periodic period of mistrust and recriminations when President Bush refused to grant Israel the 10 billion dollar loan guarantees it requested in 1991 to help it absorb the vast flow of Russian immigrants. The Likud felt that by this refusal, and by the demand that Israel freeze settlement activity in the areas, and by the linkage between settlement freeze and loan guarantees, the Bush administration was interfering in the Israeli election campaign.

Early in 1992 Israel established full diplomatic relations with China and India, thus changing completely the nature of its presence on the Asian continent.