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.

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.

This examination of the Middle East's troubled history traces the origins, development and politics of Israel's relationship with the Arab world and the West. It argues that peace with the Palestinians will leave Israel vulnerable to Iraq and Iran.

This volume examines the challenges and circumstances Israel has faced during the 1990s and addresses both the public's and leadership's singular goal of "peace and security".

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.

The future of the relationship between Israel and America is deeply uncertain: the current political leadership of both countries is hostile to the other, there is no longer a sense of shared strategic focus, and demographic changes are forcing the countries further apart with every passing year. The Start-up Nation may be enjoying a tech boom, but it also has booming inequality, booming numbers of poor and underemployed people, and booming numbers of orthodox religious conservatives (half of all Israeli preschoolers are Arab or ultra-Orthodox). In America, the increasing numbers of Jews marrying outside the faith and the precipitous decline of the influence of Evangelical Christians has narrowed the base of people devoted to the land of Israel. In the face of tectonic shifts, the alliance between America and Israel is strained to the point of rupture. The situation is dangerous for both sides, and it comes at a dangerous time for the Middle East, which will be wracked by the aftereffects of the Arab uprisings and the growth of ISIS for a generation. And for America, the success of the “pivot to Asia” will be undermined by a departure from the Middle East that leaves Israel in the role of regional wrecking ball. Undermining the relationship between Israel and the US is the fact that it was never clearly defined. The ambiguity has been politically helpful, but now threatens the future: there is no treaty, no agreed set of obligations, no mutual dependence. So when things get sour there is nothing to fall back upon except historical memory. Simon and Allin are among the shrewdest analysts of and practitioners inside the world of US-Israeli diplomacy. They have written an urgent, revelatory book showing the emerging fault lines between two previously staunch allies and the tremendous perils of a schism. And, they offer ways in which even at this late, disgruntled, embittered stage, the two sides might yet find a way toward a common future.