A review of the current political situation in Israel. It’s quite amusing and predictable. It amazes me that Bibi got re-elected in the first place. What were they thinking? Did anyone really believe he had “improved” somehow?
It is hard not to be amazed by the speed with which Netanyahu’s second term has become a kind of rerun of his first, in nearly every sense. Within 60 days, including holidays, he has entered into a conflict with the United States and its popular new president; his government started off with tension in the legal establishment, after caving in to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s demand to give his party the Justice and Public Security Ministries and chairmanship of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee. The prime minister also took a beating after the budget deliberations, when he was depicted as having zigzagged and then surrendering to the chairman of the Histadrut labor federation.
In public opinion polls, Netanyahu is already deep into the red. The percentages of satisfaction with him are approaching those of former prime minister Ehud Olmert after the Second Lebanon War. We have already seen that polls do not topple prime ministers, but they do make his term an agonizing, hair-whitening, humiliating journey.
And apparently, Bibi has the same view of Rahm Emanuel’s role as I do, although, unlike me of course, Bibi is very unhappy:
Netanyahu has told people that no matter what he says to Obama, it will never satisfy the American president and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who in Netanyahu’s circle is already being depicted as the “great Satan.” The prime minister, too, believes Emanuel is playing a major role in worsening of relations, but he is also honest enough with himself to admit that there is an entirely different approach here, an entirely different president and, as he said to someone, “an entirely different America.”
Tags: Israeli Politics
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