Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an extremist ideologue sugar-coated in a haberdashery of political colours. He is a shrewd political operator skilled in games of political brinkmanship, yet he clearly doesn’t like compromise from whatever corner it’s coming from. When need be, he calls for snap elections rather then submit to the diktats of others. He did that in 1999, although he still lost, and at the end of 2014 when he scheduled elections for March 2015. He won not with flying colours but managed to get a fourth term in office.
He likes to gather around him like-minded politicians of the extreme rightwing and religious variety. He is a committed politician with rabid nationalistic leanings who outlines the Zionist expansion project and dresses it up in terms of Israel’s security, and he is not afraid of stepping on anybody’s toes. He is obdurate and is as stubborn as a mule. In the pursuit of his objectives he creates frustrations across the Israeli political divide, antagonises politicians and is not afraid of taking on the army or even the secret service if he has to, all for a good cause of course, getting them to share his views through persuasion. Despite this, he occasionally find himself at the receiving end; today, for instance, he is facing a number of ex-Mossad officers and other behind-the-scenes officials who are expressing anger and weariness at the way Netanyahu is behaving towards Washington as the Iranian nuclear deal becomes cause celebre.
Although Americans and European politicians continue to express support for Israel, Netanyahu has become abrasive to the point of being disparaging and disrespectful. He is not afraid to wag the finger at Washington and other European capitals and criticise them, with at times, censure exceeding diplomacy to the point where some world leaders loath to meet with him. This was the case with former French president Nicolas Sarkozy when he called Netanyahu a liar in a private conversation with US President Barack Obama in 2011.
Because of what is seen as his sanctimonious behaviour, many came to see his views on issues like the now-hobbling, stop-go peace process with the Palestinians as disingenuous, obstructive and downright frustrating. US Secretary of State John Kerry and his staff said as much.
On the latest deal on Iran, which has to be ratified by Congress in September, Netanyahu has been an avid, passionate detractor who won’t give up even though he knows he is defeated. He is seen as condescending and lecturing to seasoned politicians in pursuit of pragmatic, noble and political objectives, which are good for world politics and less for nuclear proliferation.
Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said as much when Netanyahu, going behind the back of the US President, spoke to both Houses of Congress in March 2015, just two weeks before the Israeli parliamentary elections. She said she was “saddened by the insult to the intelligence of the United States as part of the P5+1 nations and…by the condescension toward our knowledge of the threat posed by Iran and our broader commitment to preventing nuclear proliferation.”
Little compunction
Netanyahu’s behaviour is nothing short of atrocious. His abrasiveness and callousness to his peers stems from the fact that he is seeking to position himself up as a father-figure type in Israel based on his long domination of Israeli politics — since the second half of the 1990s when he became Israel’s prime minister and from 2009 until today. The Israeli PM has no qualms and very little compunction about the pursuit of his own political agenda according to what he perceives as the interests of Israel, even though these may be warped, lacking in vision and political insight. What he is concerned with is maintaining the political status quo through the barrel of the gun in the Occupied Territories when he thinks there is a need to keep the people there in line, even through waging war like he frequently does in Gaza Strip.
Sadly his views are buttressed by the fact that today he is seen as the Jewish state’s second longest-serving prime minister after David Ben-Gurion with his fourth win in the March 2015 elections. After this win, he would become the longest serving prime minister, and can aptly be described as “King Netanyahu”, as he sometimes has mockingly been called. He has come out as a bombastic, no-nonsense politician who has the great majority of the Israeli electorate eating out of his hands, feeding them the usual diatribe about “Palestinian terrorism”, “Hamas violence” and their lives “as being in constant danger”. Netanyahu continually plays to their basic instincts regardless of how his Likud government and its coalition partners perform on the economy and unemployment for example. These have become secondary issues to the blanket term of national security.
He is seen as the strong, tough, iron-clad politician while the other politicians and parties — despite the fact that they have the same broad-based, consensus, policy objectives — are portrayed as weak, ineffectual and likely to put Israeli security in jeopardy.
But his father figure image doesn’t measure up because of his cold persona that almost borders on the cruel as he inflicts heavy damages and deadly assaults on an occupied Palestinian population under the guise of protecting Israel security. Thus, despite his continuous years in office, he is not regarded as matching the stature of Ben-Gurion who created Israel, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Ehud Barak, nor of the erstwhile long-time Labour politician and previous Israeli president Shimon Peres. Netanyahu is seen as a protege of Yitzhak Shamir, who attended the now long-forgotten Madrid Peace Conference of 1991 but who promised he would fill the occupied territories with Jewish colonies to make peace with the Palestinians impossible. However, he left that job to Netanyahu — of dotting the hilltops of West Bank land with Jewish colonies overlooking Arab villages all in the name of good Israeli neighbourliness.
That is Netanyahu in a nutshell, a fighter against overwhelming tidal waves that are moving in the opposite direction. Although he is supported by many in Israel, there is also fear among many that this tidal wave will also work against the Jewish state in the months and years to come. The latest antic he came up with was to say he would “kill himself” if the US Congress ratified the Iranian nuclear deal. We have to wait and see if he does actually carry out that threat!
Marwan Asmar is a commentator based in Amman. He has long worked in journalism and has a PhD in Political Science from Leeds University in the UK.
