Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu - born 21 October 1949) is the Prime Minister of Israel. He serves also as the Chairman of the Likud Party, as a Knesset member, as the Health Minister of Israel, as the Pensioner Affairs Minister of Israel and as the Economic Strategy Minister of Israel. Netanyahu is the first and only Israeli prime minister born in Israel after the State of Israel's foundation. Netanyahu joined the Israeli Defense Forces in 1967 where he served as a commander in the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit, taking part in many missions including the hostages rescue mission from the hijacked Sabena Flight 571 in 1972 (coincidentally under the leadership of Ehud Barak). He fought in the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and achieved the rank ofcaptain before being discharged. Netanyahu served as the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations from 1984 to 1988, member of the Likud Party, and was Prime Minister from June 1996 to July 1999. Netanyahu was Foreign Minister (2002–2003) and Finance Minister (2003–August 2005) in Ariel Sharon's governments, but he departed over disagreements regarding the Gaza Disengagement Plan. He retook the Likud leadership on 20 December 2005. In the2006 election, Likud did poorly, winning twelve seats. In December 2006, Netanyahu became the official Opposition Leader in the Knesset and Chairman of the Likud Party. In August 2007, he retained the Likud leadership by beating Moshe Feiglin in party elections.Following the 10 February 2009 parliamentary election, in which Likud placed second and right-wing parties won a majority, Netanyahu formed a coalition government. He is the brother of Israeli Special Forces commander Yonatan Netanyahu, who died during a hostage rescue mission, and Iddo Netanyahu, an Israeli author and playwright. In 2010, the British magazine New Statesman listed Benjamin Netanyahu at 11th in the list of "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures 2010".
Early life, military service, education and early public career
Netanyahu was born in 1949 in Tel Aviv to Zila and professor Benzion Netanyahu, the middle child of three children. He was initially raised and educated inJerusalem. Between 1956 and 1958, and again in 1963-67, his family lived in the United States in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, where he attended and graduated from the Cheltenham High School and was active in a debate club. To this day, he speaks English with an American accent. More precisely, he has still retained most of his Philadelphia accent. In 1967, after graduating from high school, Netanyahu returned to Israel to enlist in the IDF. He served as a combat soldier and a commander in the elite special forces unit of the IDF, Sayeret Matkal. He was involved in the rescue mission of the hijacked Sabena Flight 571 in May 1972 in which he was wounded by friendly fire. In 1972 Netanyahu left the army with the rank of captain.
After his army service Netanyahu returned to the United States, studied and earned a B.S. degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975, an M.S. degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1977, and studied political science at Harvard University. At that time he changed his name to Benjamin Ben Nitai (Nitai, a reference to both Mount Nitai and to the eponymous Jewish sage Nittai of Arbela, was a pen name often used by his father for articles). Years later, in an interview with the media, Netanyahu clarified that he decided to do so to make it easier on his environment at the time, which was not fluent in Hebrew, so that they would be able to pronounce his name more easily. This fact has been used by his political rivals to accuse him indirectly of a lack of Israeli national identity and loyalty. With the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 Netanyahu returned to Israel to participate in the war, joining the IDF forces battling at the Suez Canal and in the Golan Heights. After the war Netanyahu returned to complete his studies in the United States. In 1976 Netanyahu lost his older brother Yonatan Netanyahu, who served as the commander of the elite Israeli army commando unit Sayeret Matkal and was killed in action during the counter-terrorism hostage-rescue mission Operation Entebbe in which his unit rescued more than 100 hostages hijacked and flown to the Entebbe Airport in Uganda.
While studying Netanyahu worked at the Boston Consulting Group in Boston, Massachusetts.
After graduating in 1977 Netanyahu returned to Israel and had a brief career as a furniture company's chief marketing officer. In addition between 1978 and 1980 he formed the Jonathan Netanyahu anti-Terror Institute, a non-governmental organization devoted to the study of terrorism, which conducted a number of international conferences about terrorism. During this period Netanyahu made his first connections with several Israeli politicians, including Minister Moshe Arens, who appointed him as his Deputy Chief of Mission at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., a position he held from 1982 until 1984. Between 1984 and 1988 Netanyahu served as the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations.
Early political career: 1988–1996
Prior to the 1988 Israeli legislative election Netanyahu returned to Israel and joined the Likud party. In the internal elections in the Likud center Netanyahu became the fifth place on the list. Later on he was elected to as a Knesset member of the 12th Knesset, and was appointed as a deputy of the foreign minister Moshe Arens, and later on David Levy. Netanyahu and Levy did not cooperate and the rivalry between the two only intensified afterwards. During the Madrid Conference of 1991 Netanyahu was among members the Israeli delegation headed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. After the Madrid Conference Netanyahu was appointed as Deputy Minister in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office. Following the defeat of the Likud party in the 1992 Israeli legislative elections the Likud party held a primary election in 1993 to select its leader, and Netanyahu was victorious, defeating Benny Begin, son of the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and veteran politician David Levy (Sharon initially sought Likud party leadership as well, but quickly withdrew when it was evident that he was attracting minimal support). Shamir retired from politics shortly after the Likud's defeat in the 1992 elections.
Following the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, his temporary successor Shimon Peres decided to call early elections in order to give the government a mandate to advance the peace process. Netanyahu was the Likud's candidate for Prime Minister in the 1996 Israeli legislative election which took place on 26 May 1996 and were the first Israeli elections in which Israelis elected their Prime Minister directly. Netanyahu hired American Republican political operative Arthur Finkelstein to run his campaign, and although the American style of sound bites and sharp attacks elicited harsh criticism from inside Israel, it proved effective. (The method was later copied by Ehud Barak during the 1999 election campaign in which he beat Netanyahu.) Netanyahu won the election, becoming the youngest person in the history of the position and the first Israeli Prime Minister to be born in the State of Israel. (Yitzhak Rabin was born in Jerusalem, under the British Mandate of Palestine, prior to the 1948 founding of the Israeli state).
Netanyahu's victory over the pre-election favorite Shimon Peres surprised many. The main catalyst in the downfall of the latter was a wave of suicide bombings shortly before the elections; on 3 and 4 March 1996, Palestinians carried out two suicide bombings, killing 32 Israelis, with Peres seemingly unable to stop the attacks. Unlike Peres, Netanyahu did not trust Yasser Arafat and conditioned any progress at the peace process on the Palestinian National Authority fulfilling its obligations – mainly fighting terrorism, and ran with the campaign slogan "Netanyahu - making a safe peace". However, although Netanyahu won the election for Prime Minister, Labor won the Knesset elections, beating the Likud–Gesher–Tzomet alliance, meaning Netanyahu had to rely on a coalition with the Ultra-orthodox parties,Shas and UTJ (whose social welfare policies flew in the face of his capitalistic outlook) in order to govern.
See also: First term as Prime Minister: 1996–1999
Political Positions - Peace process
The policies of the Netanyahu governments towards the peace process have been subject to criticism.
Oslo Accords
From the inception of the Oslo accords, Netanyahu opposed them. During his term as prime minister in the late 1990s, Netanyahu consistently reneged on commitments made by previous Israeli governments as part of the Oslo peace process, leading American peace envoy Dennis Ross to note that “neither President Clinton nor Secretary [of State Madeleine] Albright believed that Bibi had any real interest in pursuing peace.” In a 2001 video, Netanyahu, reportedly unaware he was being recorded, said: "They asked me before the election if I'd honor [the Oslo Accords]," "I said I would, but ... I'm going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the '67 borders. How did we do it? Nobody said what defined military zones were. Defined military zones are security zones; as far as I'm concerned, the entire Jordan Valley is a defined military zone. Go argue."
Netanyahu had previously called U.S.-backed peace talks a waste of time, while at the same time refusing to commit to the same two-state solution as had other Israeli leaders, until a speech in June 2009. He repeatedly made public statements which advocated an "economic peace" approach, meaning an approach based on economic cooperation and joint effort rather than continuous contention over political and diplomatic issues. This is in line with many significant ideas from the Peace Valley plan. He raised these ideas during discussions with former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Netanyahu continued to advocate these ideas as the Israeli elections approached. Netanyahu has said:
Right now, the peace talks are based on only one thing, only on peace talks. It makes no sense at this point to talk about the most contractible issue. It's Jerusalem or bust, or right of return or bust. That has led to failure and is likely to lead to failure again....We must weave an economic peace alongside a political process. That means that we have to strengthen the moderate parts of the Palestinian economy by handing rapid growth in those areas, rapid economic growth that gives a stake for peace for the ordinary Palestinians."
In January 2009, prior to the February 2009 Israeli elections Netanyahu informed Middle East envoy Tony Blair that he would continue the policy of the Israeli governments of Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert by expanding settlements in the West Bank, in contravention of the Road Map, but not building new ones.
June 2009 peace address, "Bar-Ilan Speech"
On 14 June 2009, Netanyahu delivered a seminal address at Bar-Ilan University (also known as "Bar-Ilan Speech"), at Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, that was broadcast live in Israel and across parts of the Arab world, on the topic of the Middle East peace process. He endorsed for the first time the notion of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Netanyahu had immediately called a special government meeting after Obama finished his 4 June speech at Cairo. Yedioth Ahronoth has stated that Obama's words had "resonated through Jerusalem's corridors".
As part of his proposal, Netanyahu demanded the full demilitarization of the proposed state, with no army, rockets, missiles, or control of its airspace, and said that Jerusalem would be undivided Israeli territory. He stated that the Palestinians should recognize Israel as the Jewish national state with an undivided Jerusalem. He rejected a right of return for Palestinian refugees, saying, "any demand for resettling Palestinian refugees within Israel undermines Israel's continued existence as the state of the Jewish people." He also stated that a complete stop to settlement building in the West Bank, as required by the 2003 Road Map peace proposal, would not occur but the expansions will be limited based on the "natural growth" of the population, including immigration, with no new territories taken in although, despite this, Netanyahu still claimed that he accepted the Road Map. He did not discuss whether or not the settlements should be part of Israel after peace negotiations, simply saying that the "question will be discussed".
In a response to U.S. President Barack Obama's statements in his Cairo speech, Netanyahu remarked, "there are those who say that if the Holocaust had not occurred, the State of Israel would never have been established. But I say that if the State of Israel would have been established earlier, the Holocaust would not have occurred." He also said, "this is the homeland of the Jewish people, this is where our identity was forged." He stated that he would be willing to meet with any "Arab leader" for negotiations without preconditions, specifically mentioning Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon In general, the address represented a complete turnaround for his previously hawkish positions against the peace process.
Some right-wing members of Netanyahu's governing coalition criticized his remarks for the creation of a Palestinian State; believing that all of the land should remain under Israeli sovereignty. Likud MKDanny Danon said that Netanyahu went "against the Likud platform", while MK Uri Orbakh of Habayit Hayehudi said that it had "dangerous implications". Opposition party Kadima leader Tzipi Livniremarked after the address that she thinks Netanyahu does not really believe in the two-state solution at all; she thought that he only said what he did as a feigned response to international pressure. Peace Now blasted the speech, highlighting the fact that, in the group's opinion, it did not address the Palestinians as equal partners in the peace process. The Secretary General of Peace Now, Yariv Oppenheimer, said, "It's a rerun of Netanyahu from his first term". On August 9, speaking at the opening of government meeting Netanyahu repeated his claims from the Palestinians: "We want an agreement with two factors, the first of which is the recognition of Israel as the national state of the Jewish people and (the second of which is) a security settlement".
See also: International reaction
Remarks about Iran, Comparing Iran's leadership to Nazi German, Alleged powers of prediction, Remarks about the United States, September 11 attacks, Jonathan Pollard0.
Source: wikipedia
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