Major parties neck and neck but incumbent has path to form majority government with right-wing allies
Benjamin Netanyahu was on track on Wednesday morning to become Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, despite his Likud party winning the same number of seats as his rivals.
With 97% of votes counted, both Likud and the Blue and White party, led by former army general Benny Gantz, had won 35 seats in the 120-seat parliament, the Knesset.
Continue reading...With the final votes still being counted, both Benjamin Netanyahu's rightwing Likud and Benny Gantz's more centrist Blue and White party have declared victory. Both are currently tied at 35 seats, which is far below the 60 seats required for a majority in the Knesset. But Likud's right-wing coalition partner options are stronger than the left-wing allies available for the Blue and White party, which gives Likud and Netanyahu a slight advantage in the negotiations to come over the next few days.
The Israeli prime minister is a master storyteller. But his narrative is raising a generation for whom peace would mean betrayal
Israel is a land of storytellers. Authors such as Amos Oz and David Grossman are acclaimed worldwide, and the political thriller Fauda has the nation well and truly addicted. But the best storyteller in our country is Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister’s talent allows him to construct a narrative so realistic, one could actually believe in it. Above all, it is his great skill in manipulating characters that makes him transcend mere politics. In fact, I would hazard a guess that Netanyahu is the best storyteller in the world.
The word “storyteller” might sound disrespectful. In the streets where I grew up, in the heart of Tel Aviv, it was usually used as an insult. Jewish mamas want their sons to be doctors, not storytellers. But storytelling is a very serious business. In the case of Netanyahu, you could say it’s deadly serious.
Continue reading...Election seen as a referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu, who could almost certainly become Israel’s longest-serving leader
Israelis are due to cast their votes on Tuesday in an election that could end Benjamin Netanyahu’s astonishing 10-year uninterrupted run as prime minister. Or he will be re-elected, virtually guaranteeing him the title of Israel’s longest-ever serving leader.
Continue reading...The Israeli PM’s West Bank annexation idea is likely to have had the nod from Trump
Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to expand Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank was short on specifics. It looks, at first glance, like a typical piece of Bibi electoral gamesmanship, designed to attract rightwing and nationalist voters – and boost his hopes of tipping the balance in Tuesday’s closely fought national polls.
But Netanyahu is not simply playing politics. He has previously flirted with annexation of Judea and Samaria, as the Israeli government calls the West Bank, as part of an apparent drive to prevent the creation of a viable Palestinian state. A Haaretz poll last month found 42% of Israelis supported West Bank annexation. Netanyahu also recently suggested that Israel, in extremis, might reoccupy the Gaza Strip.
Continue reading...Israeli prime minister’s pledge seen as a rallying call in tight election race
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has pledged to annex Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories if he wins his country’s election on Tuesday, a dramatic last-minute rallying call to his nationalist base.
In interviews with domestic media ahead of the polls, Netanyahu repeated his promise and said he would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state by “controlling the entire area”.
Continue reading...It is difficult not to marvel at the scale of Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal achievement. Israel’s prime minister celebrates 10 consecutive years in power on 31 March. His country’s youngest-ever leader in 1996, he has been re-elected three times since 2009, matching David Ben-Gurion’s record. As matters stand, he has a good chance of winning again in polls on 9 April.
Netanyahu’s political achievement is altogether less marvellous. Under his grimly negative, fearful tutelage, Israeli society has shifted steadily rightwards. Attitudes to a peace settlement with the Palestinians have perceptibly hardened. Thanks in large part to Netanyahu’s uncompromising stance, the issue no longer occupies centre stage as it once did.
Continue reading...Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu hails Rafi Eitan as a hero of the intelligence services
Rafi Eitan, a renowned and controversial Israeli spymaster who masterminded the capture of Adolf Eichmann, one of the key architects of the Holocaust, has died aged 92.
The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called him a “hero of the Israeli intelligence services”.
Continue reading...Donald Trump has announced that the US will recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967, in a dramatic move likely to bolster Benjamin Netanyahu’s hopes to win re-election, but which will also provoke international opposition.
Previous US administrations have treated Golan Heights as occupied Syrian territory, in line with UN security council resolutions. Trump declared his break with that policy in a tweet.
Continue reading...Belief in two-state solution crumbles as up to 600,000 Israeli settlers remain on occupied land
Maybe it wasn’t the wisest choice for a Palestinian activist living under the close watch of Israeli security. But Fadi Quran was obsessed and determined: he would study nuclear physics at Stanford University.
“I got stopped at the border a lot,” he joked years later of the times he passed through Israeli passport control after graduating. “To be honest, when I first started I just wanted to win a Nobel prize in physics. I was 18 years old. I loved the stuff.”
Continue reading...Israel is not a state of all its citizens, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu declared on Sunday. His words should be shocking, but in truth they made explicit the message of last year’s nation state law, rendering Palestinians in Israel second-class citizens. They would be shameful if he were capable of shame. Mr Netanyahu’s campaign for re-election in the face of a bribery and fraud indictment shows he is not. He has prospered by fostering division.
This latest act of cynical bigotry is simply par for the course. The same is true of Mr Netanyahu’s awful turn to far-right parties for support. Mr Netanyahu orchestrated the merger of the racist anti-Arab Jewish Power and the pro-settler Jewish Home parties to help them pass the electoral threshold and him put together a coalition. Jewish Power includes followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose Kach party was outlawed in Israel and is designated by the US and EU as a terror organisation.
Continue reading...PM has been accused of demonising Israeli Arabs in lead-up to April election
Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel is “not a state of all its citizens”, in a reference to the country’s Arab population.
In comments on Instagram, the prime minister went on to say all citizens, including Arabs, had equal rights, but he referred to a deeply controversial law passed last year declaring Israel the nation state of the Jewish people.
Continue reading...Aipac attacks Israeli PM’s pact with ‘racist and reprehensible’ Jewish Power party
Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to enter an electoral pact with a party of ultranationalist extremists has drawn rare criticism from an influential pro-Israel group in the US.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), which has generally given unflinching support to the Israeli leader during his 13 years in power, called the Jewish Power party “racist and reprehensible”.
Continue reading...Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to build friendly relations with central European nations are being tested, on the eve of a Jerusalem summit aimed at showcasing the alliance, by disputes over Holocaust history.
Netanyahu has long been criticised by domestic opponents for seeking political alliances in central Europe while turning a blind eye to historical revisionism and antisemitism in the region. However, the Israeli leader was caught up in the dispute last week, when he said during a visit to Warsaw that Poles had collaborated with the Nazis in the Holocaust.
Continue reading...Israeli leader bets on antipathy toward Iran to overshadow Palestine issue in Warsaw
They are images that will infuriate the Palestinian leadership: the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, smiling and joking with Arab leaders at an international conference on the Middle East.
Israel has formal diplomatic relations with only two Arab states, Egypt and Jordan. For decades, one price the country has paid for its occupation of the Palestinian territories has been snubs by the majority of its neighbours.
Continue reading...‘I have nothing to lose’, says Israeli prime minister implicated in three corruption cases as elections loom
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has used a nationally broadcast address to demand that he be allowed to confront live on television the states’ witnesses who have implicated him in three corruption cases.
In a bizarre performance worthy of Donald Trump, Netanyahu suggested that the best resolution to his legal issues, which have cast a shadow over his hopes of re-election, should be a reality TV moment where he faces his accusers.
Continue reading...Palestinian leaders have rejected Washington as a mediator and Israeli politicians openly deride peace efforts
After two years of drum-rolling, Donald Trump’s “ultimate deal” for Israelis and Palestinians is about to enter what its architects claim is the pre-launch phase.
The US president has said the peace plan drawn up by his team – two former personal lawyers and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner – will be ready to unveil by the end of January.
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