Seventeenth government of Israel Seventeenth government of Israel The seventeenth government of Israel was formed by Yitzhak Rabin on 3 June 1974, following the resignation of Prime Minister Golda Meir on 11 April and Rabin's election as Labor Party leader on 26 April. It was the first time an Israeli government had been led by a native-born Israeli (although Rabin was born in the British Mandate for Palestine prior to independence). As well as the 54-seat Alignment (of which the Labor Party was the largest faction, alongside Mapam and the two Labor-affiliated Israeli Arab parties, Progress and Development and the Arab List for Bedouin
Yitzhak Rabin with the PLO. From 1990 to 1992, Rabin again served as a Knesset member and sat on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. In 1992 Rabin was elected as chairman of the Labor Party, winning against Shimon Peres. In the elections that year his party, strongly focusing on the popularity of its leader, managed to win a clear victory over the Likud of incumbent Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. However, the left-wing bloc in the Knesset only won an overall narrow majority, facilitated by the disqualification of small nationalist parties that did not manage to pass the electoral threshold. Rabin formed