On 30 October 1991, Benjamin Netanyahu found himself where, arguably, he felt most comfortable: at the centre of the world stage amid the sea of flashbulbs and television cameras of the world press that had gathered to cover the opening of the historic Madrid Peace Conference.
This was the first time that Israel and the Arab states had sat in the same room and attempted to negotiate an end to the conflict. The Palestinians were also present in the room as part of a joint delegation with the Jordanians.
Netanyahu’s presence at the conference was confirmation of his heightened importance to Yitzhak Shamir following the Persian Gulf War and of the deeply problematic relationship between Shamir and Israel’s Minister of Foreign of Affairs, David Levy. Put simply, Shamir did not trust Levy and vice versa.
As a result, Shamir decided to attend the Peace Conference himself, leaving the disgruntled Levy at home to play Cinderella. On the surface it was a strange decision, given that the conference had been arranged by the United States for the participating countries to be represented at foreign minister level.
Netanyahu for one wasn’t complaining about Shamir’s decision. Relations had soured between him and his superior at the foreign ministry in Jerusalem, and the two men were not on speaking terms. There were tales of petty jealousies over Netanyahu having played such a prominent role in the PR campaign during the Persian Gulf War. Levy did not speak English and was largely absent from the international news coverage during the war.
In retrospect, both men were hugely ambitious and were looking towards future battles. For Netanyahu, the Madrid Peace Conference was a win-win situation. While Levy sulked back in Israel, Netanyahu was able to put together his own team to offer PR support to Shamir rather than have the ministry draw up the list of experts for him. It was clear from the outset that for Shamir, whose political style was to try to say as little as possible, and who wasn’t afraid of long silences, Netanyahu represented the perfect foil.
The conference was the result of months of exhaustive American diplomacy led by the Secretary of State, James Baker, and supported by the frequent personal interventions of President Bush. In Washington, the successful military outcome to the war with Iraq was viewed as providing an opportunity to advance negotiations between the Israelis and the Arabs.
The preparation for the conference proved as difficult as the Bush administration feared it would be. Two issues were particularly hard to resolve. The first was securing the agreement of the Syrians to attend the conference. President Hafez al-Assad was widely regarded as the leader of the Israel rejectionist camp in the Arab world, and had turned down previous overtures to enter into negotiations with it. The second was securing the participation of the Israelis at the conference. Eventually, as the British Ambassador in Tel Aviv, Mark Elliot, wrote, Shamir was convinced by:
Prolonged persuasive efforts by the US administration, dwelling on the unprecedented opportunity for peace with moderate Arab regimes and spiced with occasional reminders that the US remained Israel’s paymaster.1
The Ambassador further added:
Seen from the outside world, he [Shamir] drove a pretty hard bargain, achieving the great goal of direct talks with Israel’s Arab neighbours without having to pay any price in terms of the status of East Jerusalem or explicit acknowledgement of the PLO.2
All in all Shamir was left feeling extremely satisfied that he had been able to achieve the difficult balancing act between managing his right-wing coalition and the Americans. Some members of the Israeli coalition government remained dissatisfied with Shamir’s decision for Israel to attend. They argued that he hadn’t secured ‘explicit prior assurances’ from the Americans in defining the direction and the limits of the process, and had also been forced to accept the presence of the PLO behind the scenes.3
In preparing for the conference, Shamir correctly predicted that it would be a theatrical event during which all parties would initially play to their domestic audiences by outlining their most hawkish positions towards the peace process.4 Political spin came to play an important part at the conference, as both the Syrians and the Israelis traded speeches that were laced with recriminations from the past conflicts rather than offering any new path forward.
It was for purposes of spin that Shamir took Netanyahu to Madrid rather than for any substantive advice on policy. The opportunity to excel at what he was good at – for both the domestic and international audiences – further raised the profile of Netanyahu, much to the displeasure of his formal boss in the ministry of foreign affairs. The message that Netanyahu was tasked with putting out was that the Prime Minister and the Likud clearly enjoyed strong support in Israel for their handling of the threats to Israel during the Persian Gulf War.
In terms of the peace process, Israel would consider some limited, and unspecific, concessions towards the Arabs in exchange for peace and the United States needed to be careful not to push the Israeli government too hard. In Israel, there was widespread resentment at American attempts to pressure Israel into handing over lands in exchange for peace.5
For Netanyahu, the Madrid Peace Conference was an overwhelming personal success, coming on the back of his strong performance during the Persian Gulf War. Although not wholly party to Shamir’s tactics and strategy for the conference, and the subsequent bi-lateral and multi-lateral negotiations, Netanyahu’s television skills made him an effective spokesman for the Israeli government. In political terms, however, he was still some way from the top tier of the Likud with Shamir, Levy and the Minister of Defence, Moshe Arens, at the apex of the elite.
Arens was the closest of the leading figures to Netanyahu at this point. In some respects he acted as a mentor to the younger man. Writing much later, Arens told the Washington Post, ‘I have been friendly with Netanyahu for many years . . . and it is true my relations with him, because of the age gap, were in many ways like those of father to son.’6 It was Arens who had given Netanyahu his first job as political council at the Israeli Embassy in Washington in 1982, and it was Arens who helped get Netanyahu appointed as Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations in 1984.7
In 1988 Arens was appointed as Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, and he helped appoint Netanyahu into the government as his deputy with a remit to deal with relations with the United States Congress. Both Arens and Netanyahu were educated at MIT and both men spent extended periods living and working in the United States.
Arens was arguably the most articulate senior member of the Israeli government when dealing with the English-speaking international press. His tone, however, could be likened to a teacher speaking to a not very bright student. He was often over-defensive, and this made him a much less attractive prospect for television interviewers than the more suave Netanyahu.
The patron/client-style relationship that characterized Arens and Netanyahu’s friendship was commonplace in Israeli politics, particularly in the two major parties, Likud and Labour, that had run the country in various coalitions since 1948. Indeed, at the time Netanyahu was launching his political career there were few other ways to get a foothold on the greasy ladder. Israel’s party list electoral system, in which the political parties presented a ranked list of candidates to the electorate, encouraged patron/client ties.
In order to obtain a realistic slot on the party list, candidates needed the support of one or more of the major figures in the party. In Netanyahu’s case that patron was Arens, and, to some extent initially, Shamir as well. The system encouraged strong elite control over the parties – as well as political deals – as members of the elite used the party list as a means of increasing their position within the party.
It was no coincidence that the rise of Benjamin Netanyahu corresponded with the process of democratization of Israeli politics. At party level, American-style primary elections were introduced first by the Labour Party, followed by the Likud and the others. It proved a popular move with the electorate. In political terms, it loosened the control of the party leaders over the electoral list, and as a result over the party itself. Initially only the party’s central committee were given the vote, but this was soon widened to give a vote to party members.
The side effect of the changes was that the focus for political advancement shifted from supporting the elite to attracting as much popular support as possible among party members. The easiest way to achieve this was through the media, specifically television, in order to talk directly to the party members. Naturally, Netanyahu used this format effectively to start to develop a strong camp in the party for himself. Primary elections eventually caused problems of their own, but at the start of the 1990s they were very much in vogue.
The veteran leaderships of both the Likud and the Labour Party were not inclined to support a shift towards primaries. Why would they when potentially it would reduce their patronage powers to their supporters in their respective parties? Both sets of leaderships, however, found it difficult to resist primaries given the popular support for their introduction.
The 1992 election was to be the first in which Likud and Labour would have a ranked party list of candidates for the Knesset determined by a primary vote. As it turned out, this came to help Netanyahu’s rise in the party by allowing Netanyahu and several other Likud Princes to essentially leapfrog the generation above them in the party and those who had been viewed as the natural successors to Shamir. There was a similar development in the Labour Party, whereby the young guard did well in occupying spots near the top of the list.
The other major area of reform that came to impact on Netanyahu’s rise to power was the electoral system itself. The party list system had produced coalition governments in Israel since 1948. Indeed, no one party had ever achieved an overall majority in the Knesset. From 1948 until 1977 the Labour Party (in various guises) had ruled Israel in coalition governments comprising it and several other parties (usually including the National Religious Party).
From 1977 to 1984, the Likud had become the main party of government again with various coalition partners (specifically the various religious parties in Israel). From 1984 until 1990, Israel witnessed what were known as the years of the national unity – when Labour and Likud had ruled together.
In 1990, the government had broken up amid much rancour when the Labour Party leader, Shimon Peres, attempted to form a narrow-based centre-left government. This, known rather unflatteringly in Israel as the ‘dirty or smelly’ exercise, created strong momentum for reforming the electoral system, to strengthen Israeli democracy and the ability of elected governments to govern.
The aim of the reforms were twofold: to weaken the power of the smaller parties and to strengthen the influence of the Prime Minister. There was deep dissatisfaction among Israel’s secular parties that the power of the religious parties had become too great. This led to various electoral reform proposals aimed at raising the number of votes that each party needed to win in order to secure its first seat in the Knesset.
This made perfect sense to Labour and Likud, both of whom thought that they would benefit from any increase, as it would – in all likelihood – lead to one or more smaller parties failing to get a single seat in the Knesset. In such circumstances, the votes of these parties would then be redistributed to the party with which it made an arrangement before the election. The debate here centred on how far the threshold should be raised with various proposals put forward.
Netanyahu was much more interested in the second debate about electoral reform: the potential introduction of direct elections for Prime Minister. As ever, he viewed the implications of this reform from a self-serving perspective. In 1991, Netanyahu believed one important thing about his future prospects: his best chance of becoming Prime Minister was through a direct election for the post.
The concentration on the self over the collective was something that has characterized much of Netanyahu’s career. As it turned out, his judgement was probably correct on this, but he failed to understand the damaging consequences of giving Israelis a separate ballot for Prime Minister and for the Knesset.
On this issue, Netanyahu was out of sync with the Likud and its leadership. Yitzhak Shamir made it clear he opposed the idea and felt that Netanyahu’s position on the direct election was self-serving. Shamir did not want to take part in any ‘beauty contest’, as he called it, in order to secure the premiership. This was one of several reasons why Shamir’s support for Netanyahu started to cool in the period prior to the 1992 elections in Israel.
The impetus for political reform in Israel quickened over the second part of 1991, when it became clear that the narrow-based Likud-led government was crumbling and it looked increasingly likely that Shamir would have to call for early elections. The attention of Shamir, however, in the weeks and months that followed the Madrid Peace Conference was largely taken up with dealing with increasing pressure from the United States on Israel to make concessions in the negotiations with the Arabs.8
At the same time, thousands of Soviet Jews were arriving in Israel, and, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Israel hoped that at least two million immigrants would arrive in the following decade. The newly arriving immigrants placed strains on the Israeli economy. Jobs needed to be found for them as well as housing and social services.
The result was that Israel needed $10 billion in loan guarantees from the United States to successfully absorb this potentially massive wave of immigration. The Bush administration saw this request as an opportunity to try to leverage Israel on the political front, and made a counter-demand for an Israeli freeze on settlement building. The loan guarantees, as a result, became the dominant issue in the final months of the Shamir government.9
The Shamir government refused to accept the terms of the offer from the Americans and the loan guarantee issue developed into a fully fuelled US–Israeli crisis. Shamir saw it as a one-off in an otherwise good state of relations between Jerusalem and Washington.10 He was deluding himself.
Netanyahu, with his experience in dealing with Congress, was drafted into action, to see if Congress was willing to lean on President Bush to release the loan guarantees. There was some surprise in the Israeli government that a US President would take such a course of action, coming as it did so close to the US presidential election in November 1992. Bush risked alienating the powerful American Jewish lobby group, AIPAC, and losing large chunks of the Jewish vote in the election.
The Bush administration, however, had become exasperated by the lack of progress in the negotiations in Washington that followed the Madrid Peace Conference. They increasingly felt that the Israelis were doing no more than treading water and keeping the talks going without offering any concessions. At the same time, the apparent pace of settlement building in the West Bank was quickening with the government constructing settlements rather than expanding the large existing blocks near the Green Line (the border between Israel and the West Bank).
The Americans feared, with some justification as it turned out, that the Israelis would continue to stall the talks in Washington indefinitely, while they put facts (i.e. new settlements) on the ground in the West Bank that would prevent the creation of any potential Palestinian state. In retirement, Shamir admitted that his stalling tactics were designed exactly for this purpose.
Netanyahu watched the deepening crisis in US–Israeli ties with great concern. Both President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker were sending the Likud and Israel a clear signal: the Israeli government had to choose between getting the money to absorb the newly arriving immigrants and its settlement programme in the West Bank. It wouldn’t be allowed to have both.
The Americans were essentially making the Israelis prioritize the two major ingredients of Zionism: immigrants and land. By continuing with the settlement construction in the West Bank, Shamir chose to prioritize the development of new lands over the immigrants. The message was not lost on the Soviet immigrants in Israel who, without the loan guarantees, faced a bleak and protracted process of absorption after their arrival in Israel.
It was a major challenge to the authority of the Likud, and Netanyahu, along with several other Likudniks, argued that the Bush administration was trying to directly intervene in Israeli politics. They were correct, and the meddling became deeper at the start of 1992.
The British Ambassador, writing at that time, predicted that the Likud would be ‘the governing party of the next decade’.11 Much of the reasoning for this prediction was based on the poor performance of the opposition Labour Party. As the British suggested:
There is no immediate threat from the left wing, whose thunder Shamir has in large measure stolen. The Labour Party has agonised through the year [1991] over its position and its leadership, ending up with the mixture as before – Peres and Rabin in charge.12
On 29 January 1992, Likud and Labour agreed to an election date of 23 June, thus starting nearly five months of political campaigning that took place first inside the parties, followed by the election campaign. On 19 February, Yitzhak Rabin narrowly defeated Shimon Peres to become the leader of the Labour Party for the second time. Rabin’s victory came to have a major impact on Israeli politics.
Known as Israel’s ‘Mr Security’, Rabin had been identified as the man they most wanted to lead Israel. By this stage, the more dovish Shimon Peres had been labelled as unelectable by Washington, after failing to win a decisive victory in the four most recent elections in Israel since 1977.
Bush and Baker saw Rabin as not only more electable than Peres, but also potentially more flexible than Shamir and the Likud in negotiations with the Palestinians and the wider Arab world. Rabin soon confirmed the American assessment by announcing that he would be willing to accept the conditions laid down by the Bush administration for the granting of the $10 billion of loan guarantees to Israel.
The Americans, in short, achieved their goal of creating the conditions whereby, after years of policy fudging, the Israeli electorate would be offered a real choice of priorities by the two major parties in the country. Put simply, the Likud giving greater importance to the settlements, and the Labour Party prioritizing getting the funds to successfully absorb the Soviet immigrants.
Netanyahu was among several members of the Likud who felt that Shamir had been cornered by the Bush administration, and that Rabin was receiving more favourable treatment from Washington. Netanyahu’s mentor, Moshe Arens – whose positions on the negotiations were closest to those of Netanyahu – had for some time been trying to persuade Shamir to give the Americans some concessions.13
One of Netanyahu’s rivals, the Likud Prince Roni Milo, tried to convince Shamir to give up the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians. His argument was based on the fact that nobody in Israel really wanted Gaza – with all the chaos and darkness that its occupation of this narrow strip along the Mediterranean Sea had brought for both sides in the conflict. Shamir refused. He would fight the forthcoming election without promising the United States, the Palestinians and the wider Arab world any meaningful concessions.
Within the Likud there were increasing murmurs that Shamir’s strategy placed Israel on a collision course with the United States. Shamir looked out of touch and tired. He had served as Prime Minister since 1983 (except for a two-year period between 1984 and 1986 when Shimon Peres had occupied the position as part of a rotation agreement with Labour, during which time Shamir had served as Minister of Foreign Affairs). The British Ambassador summed up the mood towards the Likud in Israel:
The Likud which for so long appeared to have replaced Labour as the natural party of government began to look vulnerable – increasingly divided internally and tainted with corruption. Shamir’s preference for inaction began to look like a habit of indecision. The pressure for clean government and constitutional reform was growing too, as was a public antipathy to the cramping compromises on daily politics imposed by the religious parties.14
The tensions within the Likud were reflected in the leadership contest that took place on 20 February 1992, among the 3,300 members of the Likud’s Central Committee. Netanyahu was part of the Arens camp that supported the 77-year-old Shamir who defeated his two bitter Likud rivals, David Levy and Ariel Sharon. Shamir secured 46 per cent of the vote to Levy’s 31 per cent and Sharon’s 23 per cent.
The result illustrated the increasing concern over Shamir’s leadership, as well as the strong support that Levy enjoyed in the party from its members of Sephardic origin.15 The belief was that Shamir would not serve a full term if he was re-elected in June 1992, but would stand down after a couple of years. The battle to succeed Shamir was already well underway.16 Shamir argued that all the intense internal fighting in the Likud at the time took place when everybody in the party was convinced that it was going to win the general election.17
For Netanyahu, the key race of his career to that point was about to take place. He sought a high position in the Likud primary, to rank in its party list for the election. This was a basic requirement in order to stand a chance of becoming a minister in the government, if the Likud emerged victorious in the general election in June.
Voting took place with the 3,300 Central Committee members of the party casting their ballots in a carnival atmosphere at a Tel Aviv fairground. Voting was in rounds, with seven places selected in each round. Shamir had already secured top spot as leader of the party. To a large extent, the political story of the vote was an agreement between the Shamir–Arens camp and the Sharon camp to effectively try to divide the list of realistic spots for their supporters at the expense of David Levy and his faction.
The result was as expected, with only a couple of Levy supporters making the list. The key result of the night was that Netanyahu was placed in the first group of seven. This was largely based on the alliance of the Shamir–Arens and Shamir camps, but it was nonetheless very impressive and had far-reaching consequences. In generational terms, Netanyahu effectively moved himself to the top of the Likud Princes by achieving a higher place on the list than people such as Benni Begin (the son of Menachem Begin).
The primary election marked Netanyahu’s arrival as a major player in the Likud. The result was no accident. Netanyahu had spent a great deal of time and effort since the Madrid Peace Conference developing his political machine. A small but dedicated team of advisors lobbied members of the Central Committee well before the official campaign started. While the leadership of the party appeared to be embroiled in a series of public quarrels, Netanyahu worked energetically to achieve the top spot among the younger generation of Likud leaders.
In retrospect, the model he used for the Likud internal elections in 1992 came to serve him well as he continued to climb the political ladder. Despite all his hard work, it almost ended disastrously when he clashed with the leadership of the party over the issue of the introduction of the direct election for Prime Minister.
Both Shamir and Arens were opposed to direct elections for Prime Minister. Shamir argued that it did not fit with the political culture for the electorate to choose between individuals rather than an ideological platform.18 On his part, Arens agreed that the direct contest risked becoming a beauty contest between the leaders of the two major parties in Israel.19
Netanyahu understood that both men were responsible for the advancement of his political career to date, and in all likelihood, would be so for the immediate future. For Netanyahu, however, this was an issue on which he didn’t want to compromise, even if it meant damaging his internal position within the Likud.
Both Shamir and Arens gave Netanyahu something of a working over in a private meeting, in which Shamir warned him that his career prospects would suffer if he went ahead and voted in favour of the reform. Shamir issued the whip to Likud MKs to vote against, but with the Labour Party under Rabin supporting the bill the outcome was considered too close to call. The pressure on Netanyahu from the Likud further increased when it became known that his vote could turn out to be the casting one.
It was significant that two of the biggest advocates of the direct system were Netanyahu and Rabin, who both believed that they were personally more popular than the party they led. Rabin was already leader of the Labour Party, but at the time Netanyahu was not close to becoming leader of the Likud. So for Netanyahu, his support of the direct election was aimed at enhancing his chances of the premiership much further down the line. Self-interest was a strong motive for both Netanyahu and Rabin, but to some extent both men were in similar positions within their respective parties.
Rabin had been elected in an open primary against Peres who largely still controlled the party organs such as the Central Committee. Rabin was more popular among the party supporters than Peres, hence his victory. Within the Likud, Netanyahu was still reliant on the patronage of Arens and Shamir. Among the ‘old guard’ of veteran Likud Central Committee members he was widely distrusted and seen as an intellectual and political lightweight. By 1992, he was, however, the favourite of party supporters who adored his media performances.
Whatever his motives, Netanyahu stood his ground on the vote for direct elections. In private, his small team of advisors warned him of the dire consequences of his actions. Shamir was not a man known to forgive people easily, especially those who he believed had betrayed him from within his own camp. Regardless of this, Netanyahu cast his vote in favour, and to his horror was the only member of the Likud to do so, and his vote did turn out to be the decisive one in the Knesset. On 18 March 1992, the Knesset passed the legislation for direct election for Prime Minister to come into effect after the June 1992 election.
The forwarded date at least meant that Shamir, given his advanced age, would not be faced with the prospect of ever having to win the premiership. It was a small mercy for Netanyahu as he made his way back to his tiny office in the Knesset. The silence in the corridors of the Knesset among the Likud MKs was deafening.
Though he probably didn’t know it at the time, Netanyahu had just taken the first major decision of his political career. It was one that left him isolated and vulnerable within the Likud. True to form, Shamir never forgave him. As the election campaign got underway, however, Shamir was too busy with his Machiavellian internal Likud political games to worry much about the man who had gone off message.
Meanwhile, the electorate was registering its discontent with the political games in the Likud with opinion polls indicating that Labour under Rabin (as the Labour Party electoral list was marketed) was making inroads into voting constituencies that had hitherto been considered Likud strongholds. Shamir was not a man to panic, but things were soon to get worse for the Likud and a victory that appeared all but assured during the previous year looked to be at risk.
Only unity would bring victory, suggested a Likud member of the party’s electoral committee. The cold reality was that the wheels were coming off the wagon, and due to petty jealousies the party’s biggest electoral star found himself benched for the campaign. The Likud would fight the 1992 election with Netanyahu as a peripheral figure. The party that had spent two years turning in on itself needed to find a way of derailing the Rabin electoral bandwagon.