Dalya Steinberger's journey across Israel's political landscape began more than 20 years ago when she cast a vote for Labor, one of almost a million people who helped propel Yitzhak Rabin to the leadership of the Jewish state. A year later, in 1993, Rabin signed the historic Oslo Accords, shaking hands with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on the lawns of the White House. A little more than two years later, the prime minister died at the hands of a rightwing assassin who objected to the Rabin-backed prospect of Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.
In the two decades since that vote, Steinberger's optimism and belief in an attainable and lasting peace with the Palestinians have evaporated. Her disillusion has led her steadily rightward: in 2006 she voted for the centrist Kadima party; in 2009 for the rightwing Likud; and in a little over a week, she expects to vote for the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home, a party that flatly opposes a Palestinian state and advocates the annexation of large swaths of the West Bank.
"To vote for the left now would feel like committing suicide," says Steinberger, a civil servant who lives on the outskirts of Jerusalem. "We have to protect ourselves and our future and we have to be strong."