By: History.com Editors

1996

Benjamin Netanyahu elected prime minister of Israel

History.com Editors

Published: February 09, 2010

Last Updated: January 31, 2025

Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres is narrowly defeated in national elections by Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Peres, leader of the Labor Party, became prime minister in 1995 after Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Jewish extremist.

Netanyahu, who promised to be tough on terrorism and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, was at 47 the youngest prime minister elected in the country’s history. Born in Tel Aviv in 1949, he served in the Israel Defense Forces and during the 1980s was Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations. In 1988, he was elected to the Israeli parliament and served as deputy minister of foreign affairs from 1988 to 1991. In 1993, he became the Likud leader and three years later Israeli prime minister.

On May 18, 1999, after three years as prime minister, a stalled peace process, and epidemic political in-fighting within his cabinet led to his electoral defeat by Labor challenger Ehud Barak. During his concession speech that evening, Netanyahu also resigned as Likud Party leader.

Netanyahu was reelected as prime minister in 2009, 2013, 2015 and 2020. In 2019, Netanyahu was indicted on charges of corruption; a criminal trial is ongoing. In 2022, Netanyahu was elected to a sixth term as prime minister. The first few months of his term were rocked by massive protests against Netanyahu's proposed overhaul of the judiciary, which critics said weakened the government's separation of powers.

How the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Began

Learn about the diverse religious and political history that brought about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. See how WWI and WWII influenced the establishment of the nation state of Israel in 1948, which gave rise to the Six-Day War, the Oslo Accords and Hamas.

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on May 31st

1819

Poet Walt Whitman, author of “Leaves of Grass,” is born

May 31, 1819 is the birthday of American poet Walt Whitman, born in West Hills, Long Island, and raised in Brooklyn.

1859

Big Ben starts ticking over London for the first time

The famous tower clock known as Big Ben, located at the top of the 320-foot-high Elizabeth Tower, begins ticking over the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London, for the first time on May 31, 1859. The great bell's strikes are first heard a few weeks later, on July 11.

1889

More than 2,000 die in the Johnstown Flood

On May 31, 1889, Pennsylvania's South Fork Dam collapses, causing the catastrophic Johnstown Flood. More than 2,200 people die in the disaster.

1902

The Boer War ends in South Africa

In Pretoria, representatives of Great Britain and the Boer states sign the Treaty of Vereeniging, officially ending the three-and-a-half-year South African Boer War.

1916

Battle of Jutland, greatest naval battle of WWI, begins

Just before four o’clock on the afternoon of May 31, 1916, a British naval force commanded by Vice Admiral David Beatty confronts a squadron of German ships, led by Admiral Franz von Hipper, some 75 miles off the Danish coast. The two squadrons opened fire on each other simultaneously, beginning the opening phase of the greatest naval battle of World War I: the Battle of Jutland.

1921

Tulsa Race Massacre begins

Beginning on the night of May 31, 1921, thousands of white citizens in Tulsa, Oklahoma descended on the city’s predominantly Black Greenwood District, burning homes and businesses to the ground and killing hundreds of people. Long mischaracterized as a race riot, rather than mass murder, the Tulsa Race Massacre stands as one of the worst incidents of racial violence in the nation’s history.

Tulsa Race Riot

1921

Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti go on trial for murder

A paymaster and a security guard are killed during a mid-afternoon armed robbery of a shoe company in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Out of this rather unremarkable crime comes one of the most famous trials in American history: that of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, which began on May 31, 1921.

1929

Ford Motor Company signs agreement with Soviet Union

After two years of exploratory visits and friendly negotiations, Ford Motor Company signs a landmark agreement to produce cars in the Soviet Union on May 30, 1929.

1930

Actor and director Clint Eastwood is born

Best known to his many fans for one of his most memorable screen incarnations—San Francisco Police Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan—the actor and Oscar-winning filmmaker Clint Eastwood is born on May 31, 1930, in San Francisco, California.

1962

Architect of the Holocaust hanged in Israel

Near Tel Aviv, Israel, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi SS officer who organized Adolf Hitler’s “final solution of the Jewish question,” was executed for his crimes against humanity.

1964

Serial killer known as the “Pied Piper of Tucson” murders his first victim

Fifteen-year-old Alleen Rowe is killed by Charles Schmid in the desert outside Tucson, Arizona. Earlier in the night, Schmid allegedly had said to his friends, “I want to kill a girl! I want to do it tonight. I think I can get away with it!” Schmid went on to kill two other teenage girls before being caught by police.

1974

“Benji” opens in theaters

On May 31, 1974, Benji, a film about a stray dog who helps rescue several kidnapped children, opens in U.S. theaters; it will go on to become a family classic.

1977

The BBC bans the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen”

On May 31, 1977, the song “God Save The Queen” earned a total ban on radio airplay from the BBC. Such a ban might signal the kiss of death for a normal pop single, but it proved a powerful endorsement for an anti-establishment rant by the British punk group known as the Sex Pistols.

2005

Identity of “Deep Throat,” source who helped unravel the Watergate scandal, is revealed

On May 31, 2005, W. Mark Felt’s family ends 30 years of speculation, identifying Felt, the former FBI assistant director, as “Deep Throat,” the secret source who helped unravel the Watergate scandal. Felt's admission, made in an article in Vanity Fair magazine, took legendary reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who had promised to keep their source’s identity a secret until his death, by surprise. Tapes show that President Nixon himself had speculated that Felt was the secret informant as early as 1973.

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Citation Information

Article title
Benjamin Netanyahu elected prime minister of Israel
Website Name
History
Date Accessed
March 22, 2025
Publisher
A&E Television Networks
Last Updated
January 31, 2025
Original Published Date
February 09, 2010

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