Ariel Sharon is Elected Prime Minister

Ariel Sharon is elected Prime Minister in a landslide victory over the incumbent Ehud Barak. This election is the last Israeli election in which voters would directly elect the Prime Minister and is the only election in Israeli history that does not have a simultaneous Knesset election. A broad Israeli political center is evolving on domestic and foreign policy matters, relatively free from the rigid outlooks of Israeli political parties thirty years earlier. Sharon is elected at the height of the Palestinian intifadah, with Israelis showing a keen desire for a vigorous response to threats against their personal security.