He’s done it! This is a beautiful day.
And a day of eerie coincidence. One of my blog’s readers (I don’t know if he’ll want to be named but he’s an IDF soldier serving mostly in Hebron) kindly posted me a Likud voting slip on the day of the election. It arrived on my doormat at the exact moment that I was told of the Bibi news today.
Here it is:
How is this good in any way shape or form? Great: let’s have the right-wing nutter who destroyed any hope of peace in the 1990s to a lead a coalition which includes a racist party.
Destroyed any hope of peace?
In fact, during his first reign as Prime Minister, Bibi personally negotiated with Yasser Arafat, signed the Wye River accords and handed most of Hebron to the Palestinians. It is the Palestinians who have consistently destroyed any hope of peace, for seven decades.
A racist party?
You mean Lieberman’s party presumably. If you read beyond the hype and distortion you will see they are no such thing.
Why is this not good? All negotiations that have included handing land to the Arabs have been under right wing / Likud leadership. It’s a party that believes in a strong bargaining position in order to ensure, first and foremost, that the needs of its own citizens are met.
Barak, despite having been willing to give away almost everything the PLO had dreamed of, actually came away having achieved nothing. Rabin who would have done the same, signed a deal that has been relegated to a place in history from where it will never see the light of day. And brought with it nothing but more terror for Israel’s people. The departure from the Gaza Strip has turned into the disaster that all the residents and many others foresaw, but the governing body chose to ignore in favour of electoral success.
Israel cannot negotiate from a position of weakness. Of cowardice. It must negotiate from a position of promise, of hope and of power. And Bibi is the man to do it. If the Arabs (for there is no real nation as a “Palestinian” nation. If there was, then it would have to include all the Jews who were born in the strip of land called Palestine pre-1948, as well as their descendants) want to show some signs of forward vision, then they must be ready to negotiate knowing that the leader with whom they are dealing will not cower at every request. For they see that as weakness, and then demand more and more, as if it was their right.
Bibi now has to show that he is a man of his word. First of all to concern himself with the safety and security of his people, and second to negotiate a settlement that the Arabs will finally see as too good to refuse, but at the same time to accept that there will always be a state for the Jews in the land “between the river and the sea”, and that it is probably in the best interests of the Arabs themselves that this remains the case…
Well said Ben.
Alas, I cannot read Hebrew. Could someone translate the voting slip, please?
And as for this blog, where has it been all my life? Why have I only just found it now? Put another way, I think I will be a regular reader.
So glad you like the blog Yokel! I am sure someone will come along and translate it soon.
Oh yeah Daniel – it was Netanyahu who destroyed the peace process. If it was not for him then Palestinians would have made peace years ago. Come on get real. Good post Chas.
Yokel, the slip reads as follows (top to bottom, right to left):
“Machal” – an acronym of the initials of the original parties making up Likud.
Halikud-Achi – the Likud-Achi (a religious faction within Likud, previously of the National Religious party)
Behanhagat Binyamin Netanyahu lerashut Hamemshala – under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu for Prime Minister.
Annie, many thanks for the translation. As for the complexity of Israeli politics, well that’s another story! As a Goy, all I want is for Israel to stand up and be proud, strong in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. No slimy “peace deals” brokered by dhimmis.