Aletho News

Is it curtains for Israel’s Netanyahu?

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | February 15, 2018

The corruption charges against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – and wife Sarah and son Yair – seem serious. RT carried a resume on the charges against him. Netanyahu’s fortunes hang by a thread now. The attorney general Avichai Mandelblit will now take a view on the Police report indicting Netanyahu. His will be the last word. If his opinion is negative, it will be sudden death for Netanyahu’s political career. Meanwhile, he is clinging on to power, hoping against hope.

But Netanyahu has become a lame duck. And Israeli politics is savage. Over two-thirds of party members in the Likud want him to resign from prime ministership. That is also the majority opinion in the country, according to polls. There have been big public demonstrations demanding that he should quit.

However, Netanyahu is a first-rate street fighter gifted with the hide of a hippopotamus. Besides, he knows that the game is over once he loses control over power. There is already some speculation that the recent Israeli air attack on the Syrian base was a diversionary tactic by the besieged prime minister. But then, it boomeranged when the Syrians shot down an Israeli F-16. The Israelis tried to ratchet up tensions. But there were no takers. (In another incident today, the Syrian air defence system chased away the Israeli reconnaissance aircraft.)

It is interesting that after the F-16 incident, Netanyahu couldn’t get through to the White House and had to be content with a conversation with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The incident didn’t prompt Tillerson to include Israel in his current regional tour, either. Perhaps, the Americans saw through Netanyahu’s game plan to distract attention away from his corruption scandals. Conceivably, the Trump administration may even have drawn the conclusion that Netanyahu won’t be around for long in the Middle East politics.

The big question is what happens if and when Netanyahu quits or is forced to quit. Will the Middle East peace process be revived? Will a new government be any better? Netanyahu has been a notorious rabble-rouser and demagogue. He was power hungry, for sure. But as a statesman he has no achievements to show. He was a rejectionist and never a creator. In the final analysis, he was a most empty man, stuffed with straw and nothing else. Israel deserved an enlightened leader to cut the furrow to lead it out of what seems to be an increasingly uncertain future ahead. Significantly, when President Trump telephoned President Putin on February 11, they discussed the Middle East settlement process.

We must keep our fingers crossed that the corruption scandals surrounding Netanyahu do not come to implicate any Indian or Indian agency. Netanyahu’s acolytes in the Indian media have gone silent when the reports appeared that the Israeli Police nailed him for corruption. In retrospect, Prime Minister Modi did the smart thing by scheduling a quick visit to the West Bank (and he fervently hugged Mahmoud Abbas as well), which somewhat took the stink out of his bonhomie with Netanyahu.

Modi went overboard by embracing Netanyahu, but he must have had some compelling reason for it. Frankly, Modi may have had the last laugh. Indeed, Netanyahu got lavish hospitality — and a fabulous week-long holiday — away from the hurlyburly of Israeli politics. But at the end of it all, he left India empty-handed. Modi gave away nothing.

February 15, 2018 - Posted by aletho | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel