Early general elections for both the Prime Minister and the Knesset were held in Israel on 17 May 1999 following a vote of no confidence in the government; the incumbent Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ran for re-election.
This election was only the second time in Israeli history an election had been held for the Prime Minister's post in addition to elections for the Knesset. The first such election, in 1996 had been an extremely tight contest between Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu on the right, and Labor's Shimon Peres on the left; the right had won by less than one percent (about 29,000 votes).
Ehud Barak, promising peace talks and withdrawal from Lebanon by July 2000,[1][2] won the election.