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Benjamin Netanyahu

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[Benjamin Netanyahu] ([Media helphelp]·[info]) (Hebrew: בִּנְיָמִין נְתַנְיָהוּ (without niqqud: בנימין נתניהו), Hebrew transliteration written in English: Binyamin Netanyahu, nicknamed Bibi) (born October 21, 1949, Tel Aviv) was the 9th Prime Minister of Israel.

Leader of the conservative Likud party, he was Prime Minister from June, 1996 to July, 1999. He is the first (and to date only) Prime Minister of Israel to be born after the State of Israel's foundation. He was Finance Minister of Israel until August 9, 2005, when his resignation letter came into force. He resigned in protest at the Gaza Disengagement Plan advocated by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Netanyahu retook the Likud leadership on December 20, 2005. As of May 4, 2006, he is the official leader of the Opposition in the Knesset.

Contents

Family and personal background

Netanyahu was born in Tel Aviv, to Zila and Ben-Zion Netanyahu. Netanyahu's father is a professor of and a former editor of the Hebrew Encyclopedia. His elder brother Yonatan, who was killed during Operation Entebbe in 1976, is an Israeli war hero. His younger brother Iddo is a radiologist and writer. All three brothers served in the elite Sayeret Matkal reconaissance unit. Netanyahu speaks English with an American accent and most people would assume that he is a native speaker of English. When Binyamin Netanyahu was 14 years old, his family moved to the United States and settled in Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia suburb, where he graduated from Cheltenham High School. He holds a BS in Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Master's degree in Management (M.B.A.) from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and has studied political science at Harvard and MIT. After graduate school, Netanyahu returned to Israel. Netanyahu was married twice before, and has a daughter, Noa, from his first marriage to Micki Weizman. Netanyahu's second marriage was to Fleur Cates, who converted to Judaism for his sake since only her father was a Jew. He is married to his third wife, Sarah, with whom he has two children - Yair and Avner.

After a brief career in business, Netanyahu was appointed Deputy Chief of Mission at the Israeli Embassy in Washington in 1982. Subsequently, he became Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations, serving from 1984 to 1988. He was elected to the Knesset in 1988 and served in the governments led by Yitzhak Shamir from 1988 to 1992. Shamir retired from politics shortly after Likud's defeat in the 1992 elections. In 1993, for the first time, the party held a primary election to select its leader, and Netanyahu was victorious, defeating Binyamin Ze'ev Begin, son of the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and veteran politician David Levy. (Ariel Sharon initially sought the Likud leadership as well, but quickly withdrew when it was evident that he was attracting minimal support.)

Prime minister (1996-1999)

In 1996, for the first time, Israelis elected their Prime Minister directly. Netanyahu was elected in 1996 after a wave of terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. Shimon Peres, who had succeeded the assassinated Labour Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was initially favoured in the polls, but could not stop the terror attacks and public confidence in him dropped rapidly. On March 3 and 4, 1996, Palestinian terrorists carried out two lethal suicide bombings in which 32 Israeli citizens were killed. Those two attacks were the main catalyst in the downfall of Peres, who eventually lost the election due to his inability to stop attacks against Israelis. Unlike Peres, Netanyahu did not trust Yasser Arafat and conditioned any progress at the peace process on the Palestinian Authority fulfilling its obligations - mainly fighting terrorism. His campaign slogan was "Netanyahu - making a safe peace".

Perhaps due to his American education, Netanyahu hired American Republican political operative Arthur Finkelstein to run his campaign. Although the American style of sound bites and sharp attacks elicited harsh criticism from inside Israel, it proved effective and Netanyahu's Likud Party took control. In 1999, Ehud Barak would choose a similar style to challenge Netanyahu by bringing in Bill Clinton's former campaign manager, James Carville, as well as American consultant Bob Shrum and pollster Stanley Greenberg.

As Prime Minister, Netanyahu negotiated with Yasser Arafat in the form of the Wye River Accords (1998). While Netanyahu's approach to the peace negotiations was popular, some accused him of trying to stall any progress.

"If they give - they'll get. If they don't give - they won't get".
"יתנו - יקבלו. לא יתנו - לא יקבלו"
No progress was made in peace talks with the Palestinians, and Netanyahu failed to implement the agreed steps of the Oslo Accords. In 1996, Netanyahu and Jerusalem's mayor Ehud Olmert decided to open an exit for the Western Wall tunnel. This sparked three days of riots by Palestinians, resulting in both Israelis and Palestinians being killed.

Netanyahu was opposed by the political left wing in Israel and also lost support from the right because of his concessions to the Palestinians in Hebron and elsewhere and due to his negotiations with Arafat generally. After a long chain of scandals (including gossip regarding his marriage) and an investigation opened against him on charges of corruption (later acquitted), Netanyahu lost favor with the Israeli public.

After being defeated by Ehud Barak in the 1999 Israeli general elections, Netanyahu temporarily retired from politics.

Political activity after 2000

Benjamin Netanyahu, 2003
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Benjamin Netanyahu, 2003

In 2002, after the Israeli Labor party left power and vacated the position of foreign minister, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appointed Netanyahu as Foreign Minister. Netanyahu challenged Sharon for the leadership of the Likud party, but failed to oust Sharon. After the 2003 elections, Netanyahu accepted the post of Finance Minister in a newly formed Sharon coalition. Netanyahu did not support the concept of a future Palestinian state, though on two occasions in 2001, he indicated willingness to consider the idea [link].

As Finance Minister, Netanyahu undertook an economic plan in order to restore Israel's economy from its low point during the al-Aqsa Intifada. The plan involved a move toward more liberalized markets, although it had been seen by many opponents as controversial. Netanyahu succeeded to pass several long-in-the-queue reforms, including an important reform in the banking system that followed with a significant increase in the GDP growth rate.

Netanyahu threatened to resign in 2004 unless the Gaza pullout plan was put to a referendum, but later lifted the ultimatum. He submitted his resignation letter on August 7, 2005, shortly before the Israeli cabinet voted 17 to 5 to approve the initial phase of withdrawals of the Gaza Disengagement Plan. Netanyahu's resignation went into effect August 9, 2005, two days after he submitted his letter. Shortly thereafter he revealed he had rejected an invitation to serve as Italy's finance minister, allegedly extended to him by Italian billionaire businessman Carlo De Benedetti, who later said it was a joke.

Following the withdrawal of Ariel Sharon from the Likud, Netanyahu was one of several candidates who vied for the Likud leadership. His most recent attempt prior to this was in September 2005 when he tried to hold early primaries for the position of the head of the Likud party, while the party held the office of Prime Minister - thus effectively pushing Ariel Sharon out of office. The party rejected this initiative. Netanyahu retook the leadership on December 20, 2005, with 47% of the primary vote. In the March 2006 Knesset elections Likud shared the third and the fourth places with Shas, behind Kadima and Labor.

Books and articles

Books: Articles:

References

External links

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