Ben-Gurion, Sharett and Dayan

Operation Kadesh – the Israeli attack on Egyptian forces in Sinai in October 1956 – was an ideological watershed in Israeli politics. It brought to a head the debate between the bitchonistim – the activists led by Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan who placed the military search for defensible borders as a primary goal – and those such as Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett who did not accept the inevitability of ‘a second round’, and insisted instead on exploring all avenues of contact with the Arab states. Sharett's enforced resignation in the summer of 1956 brought to an end a long and distinguished political career, but it also symbolized the demise of pursuing peace through negotiations during the next two decades. While Ben-Gurion looked to the generals and Sharett to his diplomats, their differences were firmly rooted in their political backgrounds.

Sharett's father had been one of the Biluim, the first Zionist pioneers to reach Palestine in 1882. The Sharetts were part of the Zionist intelligentsia and were more influenced by Herzl's General Zionism and European liberalism per se. They did not join any of the political parties – neither the Marxist Poale Zion nor the Tolstoyan Hapoel Hatzair. They were originally attracted to the principle of non-alignment, endorsed by figures such as Berl Katznelson. When Achdut Ha'avodah was established out of a desire to have a unified workers’ party, Moshe Sharett joined even though he was far closer to the non-Marxist Hapoel Hatzair. His close friend and colleague in Mapai in the 1930s was the former leader of Hapoel Hatzair, Chaim Arlosoroff. Moreover, Sharett's period of study at the London School of Economics in the 1920s brought him into contact with Anglo–Jewry's liberal elite and the President of the World Zionist Organization, Chaim Weizmann, who was himself a General Zionist.