Israel Under Netanyahu

Examining Benjamin Netanyahu’s more than a decade-long period as Israel’s Prime Minister, this important book evaluates the domestic politics and foreign policy of Israel from 2009-2019. This comprehensive study assesses Israel’s main political parties, highlights the special position in Israel of Israel’s Arab, Russian and religious communities, appraises Netanyahu’s stewardship of Israel’s economy, and analyzes Israel’s foreign relations. The scholars contributing to the volume are leading experts from both Israel and the United States and represent a broad spectrum of viewpoints on Israeli politics and foreign policy. The case studies cover the Likud party, the non-religious opposition parties such as Labor, Meretz, and Yesh Atid, the Arab parties, the religious parties and the Russian-based Yisrael B’Aliyah party, and present analyses of the ups and downs of Israel’s relations with the United States, the American Jewish Community, Iran, Europe, the Palestinians, the Arab World, Russia, China, India, and Turkey as well as Israel’s challenges in dealing with terrorism. Another highlight of the book is an assessment of Netanyahu’s leadership of the Likud party, which seeks to answer the question as to whether Netanyahu is a pragmatist interested in a peace deal with the Palestinians or an ideologue who wants Israel to hold on to the West Bank as well as all of Jerusalem. This volume will be of interest to readers who wish to understand the dynamics of Israel during Benjamin Netanyahu’s time as Prime Minister and are interested in the history and politics of Israel and the Middle East.

In a passionate, meticulously researched work, Israel's most charismatic spokesperson traces the origins, history, and politics of his country's relationship with the Arab world and the West--and offers for the first time his own detailed plan for a real, lasting peace in the Middle East.

Benjamin Netanyahu's 1996 election victory marked a major turnaround in his fortunes, for only a few months earlier his political career had seemed finished. This book examines what his victory means both domestically and internationally.

This research discusses the second-generation Likud leaders, known as the Princes, who have dominated Israeli politics for most of the last three decades: their relations with their parents and the extent to which they have followed in (or diverged from) their footsteps. The main theme seeks to explore the unique, perhaps unprecedented, socio-political phenomenon of generational duplication in a western-type democracy. This volume examines the ways and means through which the disciples of Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky managed not only to maintain lasting control of their mentor's creation – to transform after Israel's establishment from a small opposition party into the country's dominant and ruling party – but also hand down this political pre-eminence to their descendants. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the son of Ben-Zion Netanyahu, "foreign minister" of Jabotinsky's movement. President Reuven Rivlin is the son of resistance warrior Rachel Rivlin. MP Benny Begin is the son of Menachem Begin. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and many others were also part of those "Princes". A breakthrough in the world’s inter-generational research, the book is for readers interested in political science, sociology, and the politics of Israel and the Middle East.

In the wake of the 2019 Israeli legislative election, the current balance of power in Israel is held by smaller right-wing and religious parties - led by Aryeh Makhlouf Deri, Yaakov Litzman, Avigdor Lieberman, Rafi Peretz and Moshe Kahlon - having the power to encourage and convince Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu to work towards a Middle East peace plan, that would be just and fair to both Israelis and Palestinians... Consequently high-ranking European politicians have urged the EU to reject any US Middle East peace plan unless it is fair to Palestinians - which could also be a one-state solution; meaning that the Israeli government would have to grant equal democratic rights as well as freedom of movement to both Palestinians and Israelis; so that the Gaza blockade can finally be lifted... Critical, but also deeply sensitive and humane, this book explores social scientific and ethical approaches, so that a just social peace can finally be manifested in Palestine and Israel.

Benjamin Netanyahu traces the origins, history and politics of Israel's relationship with the Arab world and the West, providing a view of the country's precarious situation among the Arabs, and revealing his own plan for peace in the Middle East. the hostile target, not only of an Arab world more than 500 times its size, but of so much of the West. He wonders how what he identifies as the only democracy in the Middle East has become the focus of Western criticism of the kind never directed at the surrounding Arab tyrannies. He argues against the lies which he feels are levelled against Israel today, by using the facts of ancient and modern history to establish his country's case. attainable, but only if the nature of Middle-Eastern politics and the volatile forces within Arab and Islamic society are taken into account. He puts forward his plan for an Israeli renewal, and calls for sweeping political and economic reforms to enable the Jewish state to achieve a permanent position on the international stage.

During the 1990s many dramatic changes influenced the basic characteristics of the Israeli democracy. This volume examines the challenges and circumstances the country has faced and addresses both the public's and leadership's singular goal of "peace and security". The book also investigates the renewed constitutional framework which attempted to meet new challenges, but in reality contributed to the evolution of "new politics" and a new party system. This new system is explored through an analytical study of the history of the party system with an emphasis on new phenomena, such as the growing fragmentation of recent years. Developments since the early 1990s are also examined, looking at the governmental periods of Prime Ministers: Shamir, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu and Barak.

The first biography that collects the threads of Benjamin Netanyahu's tumultuous personal life, controversial public career and struggle to endure as the Jewish state's leader and the master of its destiny. It is told by a writer who has spent his career explaining the world to Israelis and interpreting Israel for a global readership. Benjamin Netanyahu was born a year after Israel. His story in many ways embodies that of the ideological underdogs of the Zionist enterprise: members of the right-wing Revisionist movement, the religious, the Mizrahi Jews who emigrated from Arab lands, the petit-bourgeoisie of the new towns and cities, who all were supposed to metamorphose into the new Israeli. It hasn't quite worked out that way. Netanyahu is also a child of America. He is in large part the product of the affluent East Coast Jewish community and of the generation that came of age in the Reagan era. He was formed as much by American Cold War conservatism as he was by his historian father's hardline right-wing Zionism. It is impossible to understand today's Israel without understanding this singular person's life. Netanyahu's Israel is a hybrid of ancient phobia and high-tech hope, tribalism and globalism--like the man himself. In the face of animus at home and abroad, Netanyahu has survived political defeat and personal setback. For many in Israel and overseas, Netanyahu is an anathema, an embarrassment, even a precursor of Donald Trump. But he continues to dominate Israeli public life and the Jewish narrative of the twenty-first century. As Israel approaches the seventieth anniversary of its birth, this one man more than any other embodies the nation and directs its fate.