Benjamin Netanyahu

Trivia

• In 1982 he began a diplomatic career when appointed deputy chief of mission to the United States, where he served until 1984, already then impressing people in Jerusalem with his television "persona" and ability to defend Israeli hard-line policies.
• In 1984 Netanyahu shifted from Washington to New York, serving for the next four years as Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, again proving extremely effective.
• Regarded as the protégé of Yitzchak Shamir, Netanyahu was recalled to Israel, where he acted as deputy foreign minister (1988 to 1991) and deputy minister for information in the prime minister's office (1991 to 1992), participating as a member of the Israeli delegation in the 1991 Madrid Middle East peace conference and subsequent early peace talks in Washington.
• All this time he involved himself increasingly in internal Likud Party politics, being elected in 1988 to the Knesset, where he was a strong advocate of electoral reform and helped to pass legislation establishing direct election of the prime minister.
• Netanyahu gained control of the Likud Party in March 1993.
• His upset victory unquestionably constituted a tremendous personal triumph and overnight regained for him the world press attention he had enjoyed during the 1991 Persian Gulf war when he appeared regularly as a principal spokesman for Israel on CNN and other network commentary programs.
• However, he also faced the immediate challenge of reorganizing a party demoralized and in disarray following its defeat in the June 1992 general elections at the hands of Labor, led by Yitzchak Rabin and Shimon Peres.
• No less of a challenge was the need for Netanyahu to orchestrate efforts at redefining the Likud Party's strategy and platform to reflect both changing global and Middle Eastern circumstances as well as national priorities.
• Nor would his task be made any easier by the lingering resentment of those party veterans who had lost out to Netanyahu, and who, each in his own way, continued to question Netanyahu's's leadership capabilities.
• David Levy, thinking himself the logical successor to Begin and Shamir and having his source of power among the large numbers of working-class Sephardim (Israelis of oriental origin) from the development towns, openly criticized Netanyahu's early decisions and kept aloof from party activities.

Quotes

• "We don't point a pistol at our own forehead. That is not the way to conduct negotiations."
• "There is a fundamental situation in which the country has reached rock bottom, that a mother can't send her children out of the house in the morning. The country has reached rock bottom and this needs to be changed."
• "The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons."
• "I'm a proud member of the rabble. "
• "I think that a strong Israel is the only Israel that will bring the Arabs to the peace table. "
• "I am certain that I speak on behalf of my entire nation when I say: September 11th we are all Americans - in grief, as in defiance. "
• "I always lose the election in the polls, and I always win it on election day. "
• "First of all, Arafat is wrong. Jerusalem is Israel's capital, will never be divided, and will remain the capital of the State of Israel, the capital of the Jewish people, for ever and ever."
• “We lost by a very few votes. There is a very large camp that went against the flow, against the wind, against the pressure, against the leadership and against the temptations.”
• “So Arafat can no more declare unilaterally what that outcome would be than I could. We could each unilaterally decide what we want and then we'd have an explosion.”