Bibi: Man of history or man of the past?
Netanyahu is the first Israeli prime minister born after the creation of the state of Israel. And yet, modern as he is when it comes to so many matters -- technology and economic reform, for example -- he's deeply mired in the past. The Holocaust and his late father's writings on the Spanish Inquisition shaped him, and continue to weigh heavily. Rabin would never have used Holocaust imagery to describe Israel's security predicament, and yet Bibi frequently uses analogies from the 1930s when he describes the Iranian threat.
And it's not an act. For Netanyahu, the Jewish people are at risk. It's deeply ingrained in his approach to the world. To be sure, Jews worry for a living -- their dark history compels them do to so. But Bibi worries about everything, including the Americans, whom he believes (perhaps rightly at times) don't understand Israel's situation. You live in Chevy Chase, he once told me -- we don't have any margin for error in our neighborhood.
Ehud Olmert used to say that Israeli prime ministers sleep with one eye open. Bibi sleeps with two open. He's constantly on guard.
The paradox of the deep bench
A number of very smart columnists have been making the argument lately that Netanyahu's deep coalition now gives him a chance to lead, and no excuses not to. But some of the boldest Israeli steps have been taken under very different circumstances: Rabin signed Oslo with a narrow coalition, and Barak attempted to push through Camp David with essentially no government. There's no doubt that if Netanyahu wanted to make peace with the Palestinians, he'd be better positioned now with Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz at his side. But the unity government with Kadima is more a coalition designed to ensure domestic peace and tranquility than to forge a deal with the Palestinians.
Think about it. The unity government insulates Bibi from the pressures of the right wing, improves Israel's global image (if only slightly), defers the chances of elections for at least a year, positions him as a unity prime minister if Israel strikes Iran, and makes an internal challenge on the peace process almost impossible, as Mofaz has agreed to abide by Bibi's rules.
It also protects Bibi against the prospects of a reelected Obama coming after him on the Palestinian issue. At least for the next year or so, the existing government guidelines prevail -- guidelines that make a deal with any Palestinian partner unlikely. To alter this situation, an American president would have to line up the Palestinians, the Arabs, and the international community to make an offer that even Netanyahu couldn't refuse, except at the cost of undermining his own political future. And that's a tall -- perhaps impossible -- order.
Leaders are sometimes found, or perhaps created, in the most unexpected places. And the most intransigent among them can change -- take Begin, Rabin, Sharon, and Olmert. Indeed, the history of peacemaking in Israel is not a history of the peaceniks, it's one of transformed hawks -- men of the right and center right who were changed by circumstance and by necessity, war, and diplomacy.
Can Benjamin Netanyahu be such a transformed hawk?
Ami Ayalon, a former head of Shin Bet and one of the most astute analysts of the region's politics, told me recently that Netanyahu has the chance to do that and more. Theodor Herzl envisioned the idea of a Jewish state, and Ben Gurion helped to create and fashion it. Through peace with the Palestinians, Ayalon observed, Netanyahu now has an opportunity to secure its Jewish and democratic character.
I'd love to believe it. But I won't be holding my breath.
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