Did Clinton ever stop to consider the possibility of Benjamin Netanyahu? If so, did he see the irony? Because, in a way, ““Bibi’’ is the Israeli Clinton, a weird reverse-image Clinton. Not just because he’s the ultimate television performer, who waged the final battle of the campaign – last Sunday’s debate with the courtly, prolix Peres – on his home court: in the living rooms of Israel. And not just because Netanyahu’s knee-jerk bellicosity seems the Israeli analog to Clinton’s all-American empathy. And not even because he has wandered through the same sordid alleys of postmodern morality, having endured a humiliating sex scandal in 1993. No, the truly eerie similarity between Clinton and Netanyahu is an impatient, mesmerizing ambition – an ambition uncluttered by doubt or hesitation – that enabled each to achieve unexpected, unlikely victories, the first of their generation to rise to power in their respective political parties.
Likud in 1993 looked like the Democrats in 1991. It seemed faded, demoralized, out of energy. It had been defeated a year earlier by Rabin and Peres. Its potential leaders were either too old, too young or too extreme. Among the youngsters – princes, they were called – Benjamin Netanyahu was not a very likely prospect. Dan Meridor and Benjamin Begin were said to be smarter. Ehud Olmert, now mayor of Jerusalem, was a better politician. But each, for his own reasons, hesitated. ““We had been part of the [Shamir] government, which was a disadvantage,’’ Olmert said. ““Bibi was an outsider.’’ Netanyahu had a raft of other disadvantages, though: he was considered too glib, too inexperienced (he’d never held a major government post), too hormonal, too TV. ““I thought Meridor would be the one who emerged,’’ said an American Jewish leader. ““Dan’s so decent. It was probably just wishful thinking.''
Bibi was not so ““decent’’ or decorous. He made his move while others temporized, like Clinton in 1991. In 1993, ““Likud was like a plain woman who’d reached the age of consent,’’ says Ze’ev Chafets, a leading journalist and author. ““She’d had a strict father [Menachem Begin] and an even stricter uncle [Yitzhak Shamir]. She could marry the responsible young lawyer [Meridor] or the boss’s son [Benny Begin]. Who could blame her for running off on horseback with Bibi?’’ The romance wasn’t supposed to last: Netanyahu was too intemperate, too closely associated with right-wing extremists. Just after the Oslo accords were announced, I watched Netanyahu lead a hateful rally of settlers chanting: ““Israel is in danger!’’ It seemed a rude, vestigial sort of anger, profoundly out of step with the relieved, hopeful mood that had swept the country. In the years that followed, there were many such nights. And after Yitzhak Rabin was murdered, Bibi seemed too tarnished to ever lead the nation. The expectation among his fellow princes was that Bibi would run, and lose, and never be heard from again. Pace Bill Bradley, Dick Gephardt, Mario Cuomo.
And now, another irony perhaps: as Israel’s first, true American-style politician, Netanyahu will have to govern as an American might. He will have to court the moderates. He will have to please Natan Sharansky, whose party of recent immigrants, Israel Ba-Aliyah, won a pivotal six seats in the parliamentary elections. He may have to make good on his promise to appoint Dan Meridor as defense minister, rather than the noisy old hawk Ariel Sharon. He will even – eventually – have to shake Yasir Arafat’s hand, a commitment he couldn’t quite bring himself to make during the campaign. Because these election results are no mandate: if most Israelis aren’t ready to give up the Golan Heights or any part of Jerusalem, they also aren’t ready to give up the security and prosperity that has come with peace. And they are most definitely not ready to resume the anguish of renewed custody over the West Bank and Gaza.
Indeed, if Bill Clinton takes stock of Bibi Netanyahu’s ambition he may see a possibility there: the desire to be remembered, as Menachem Begin is, as a man tough enough to make peace. It may well be that Bibi’s stubbornness, not Peres’s gauzy platitudes, will prove the more enlightened road to Damascus. Success will require a new temperance on Netanyahu’s part, a discipline and demeanor that his American counterpart has had to learn the hard way. But the same desperate, headlong propulsion that led Clinton and Netanyahu to power, each at an unripe 46, may lead to premature wisdom as well. The question now is whether Bibi is ambitious enough to be wise.
