On 4 September 1996, in a small, plain room in a nondescript office block at an Israeli army base at the Erez Checkpoint in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu met Yasser Arafat for the first time. Netanyahu arrived for the meeting looking tense and was greeted by a small, but vocal demonstration from members of Peace Now, an Israeli activist group. Arafat soon followed and both men, along with their respective teams, sat across the table from one another. The room was eerily quiet except for the noise of cameras clicking and the murmur of Palestinian security officers.
On the Israeli side, Netanyahu’s foreign policy advisor, Dore Gold, who sat two places to the right of Netanyahu, didn’t know where to look. He glanced nervously across the table before looking back at the Prime Minister. Eventually, as if to try to end the unbearable tension, Netanyahu and Arafat stood, extended their arms and shook hands. Netanyahu looked directly at Arafat and then turned his head to the camera and with a slight frown on his face sat down.
After the cameras stopped clicking there was silence, which was only interrupted by a mobile phone ringing. Netanyahu once again turned his head and looked directly towards the TV cameras with a vacant, distant expression as if to suggest that he would rather be anywhere else in the world than in this room.
Cynics, critics and political enemies of Netanyahu accused him of play-acting for the cameras: a theatrical performance to match those from earlier in his career. There was speculation as to whether he had rehearsed the handshake, his body language and the frown to make sure that his performance set exactly the tone he wanted to transmit to the watching world.
No matter how pre-planned or otherwise, the handshake with Arafat was a decisive moment in his life. Nothing for him would be the same again, and everything that had happened to his family in the past would need to be looked at through a new reality.
As the meeting broke up, Netanyahu gave a very run-of-the-mill statement to the waiting world press:
After my talks today here I can observe that both parties reiterate their commitment to the interim agreement and their determination to carry out its implementation. However, I would like to emphasize that we have to take into account the needs and the requirements of both sides on the basis of reciprocity and the assurance of the security and well-being of both Israelis and Palestinian alike.
He then went on to try to reassure the Palestinians (and through them the Clinton administration):
I have heard in the Palestinian press and Palestinian quarters that my intention is to fragment, to break up the agreement. This is not true. This is not our intention. We want to advance the issues of concern to all of us and we want to do so in such ways to facilitate negotiations on the final status.
I also want to make clear that our position is to not only move on the peace process but to also improve the prosperity and economic conditions of the Palestinian population.
We think that prosperity and peace go hand in hand and I believe that we can advance to achieve both goals for the benefit of both peoples.
The link between peace and economic advancement was a nice touch. One of the major complaints of the Palestinians was that the peace process had not improved its economic wellbeing; rather, the economic difficulties had got worse. Arafat and the PA blamed this on the closures imposed by the Rabin and Peres-led governments on the Gaza Strip and West Bank that followed attacks on Israel by Palestinian groups.
The ice had been broken, the taboo ended, and for Netanyahu he would no longer have to try to dodge the Arafat question.
It had been the question that almost every journalist had asked him since he had taken office on 18 June 1996: would he meet with the head of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat? During the election campaign, Netanyahu had stated that he would avoid meeting Arafat unless absolutely necessary. The ambiguity of the statement lay in the fact that an Israeli Prime Minister who wished to continue with the implementation of the Interim Agreement would have to meet with Arafat.
Given the obsession of the media about the potential for a meeting with Arafat, Netanyahu had decided to arrange it sooner rather than later. During his first visit to the United States as Prime Minister at the start of July 1996 Netanyahu met with President Clinton on 9 July. Clinton was keen to hear Netanyahu commit himself and his government to fully implementing the next stage of the Interim Agreement, which centred on Hebron.
At the press conference that followed their lunchtime meeting, the first question Netanyahu received focused on the land-for-peace formula, a withdrawal from Hebron and the possibility of a meeting with Arafat. Netanyahu answered the first two parts of the question, but chose to ignore the third. The journalist repeated the final part of the question: Are you willing to meet with Mr Arafat? Do you plan to meet with Mr Arafat soon?
Netanyahu replied evasively:
Well, as you know, we have on-going contacts with Mr. Arafat and with the Palestinian Authority. I have my own representatives who have been meeting with him on a regular basis. And we’ll expand these contacts, both in frequency and the level of the personnel involved. I said that if I deem it necessary for peace or for the interest of Israel to meet Arafat, I won’t rule it out, and I have not changed my position.1
The ‘will he, won’t he’ question refused to go away over the summer holiday season. For the international journalists, the question of a potential meeting led to huge coverage about the issue in the media during the relatively quiet news cycle of August.
Privately, Netanyahu had long made up his mind that he would meet with Arafat, but he liked the drama. In building the suspense, Netanyahu hoped that his eventual meeting with Arafat would be perceived by the Clinton administration as an Israeli concession in the Palestinian peace process. It proved to be a not wholly unsuccessful strategy.
Throughout the period from the start of the Netanyahu government up to the handshake with Arafat, the world’s media had been full of the bite-size chunks of the Netanyahu life story. It resembled a ‘Netanyahu made simple’ guide or an ‘everything you wanted to know about the Prime Minister of Israel, but were afraid to ask’ session. To some extent, the international press was still playing catch-up with the personal narrative and character of the man most had written off less than a year earlier.
Over and over again the journalistic profiles published at the time focused on the impact on Netanyahu of the death of his older brother Yonatan (Yoni) – killed during the Entebbe raid in 1976. Benjamin Netanyahu’s tough line against terrorism, and Yasser Arafat in particular, was said to have originated from his brother’s death.
The reality of the impact of Yonatan on Benjamin, however, is much more complex than first meets the eye. It was not only in the area of terrorism that Yoni’s death became linked to the development of Netanyahu’s philosophy and outlook on the world.
As is the case with many families with two or more boys, Netanyahu worshipped his older brother, who was the son that the family felt was most likely to succeed. Benjamin was the middle brother, with Iddo the younger brother. As the middle brother, Benjamin did not feel as pressured to succeed as Yonatan. For Yonatan the route to military, academic and political advancement was clearly laid out.
In Israel success is measured in a different way from the United States or Europe. In Israeli terms, it meant enjoying a successful career in the IDF before completing a postgraduate degree overseas, and then going into national politics or senior management in a business corporation. Those who served in the senior ranks of the army were often offered top level positions in the major political parties and in the government. The Israeli expression ‘political parachuting’ essentially meant being given a senior political role soon after leaving the IDF.
The Netanyahu family hoped their eldest son would one day be promoted to the rank of general, potentially then to become the Chief of Staff of the IDF, before transferring into politics and becoming Prime Minister. Far-fetched ambitions perhaps, but Benjamin Netanyahu believed that everything could be achieved by his brother. The career path of one of Yonatan’s contemporaries, Ehud Barak, followed this exact route.
The young Benjamin Netanyahu was happy to share his family’s hopes for his elder brother. His own interests were being drawn in different directions such as architecture and subsequently business. He hoped that his success would be measured by his wealth. Given his early acquired taste for top-notch restaurants and his enjoyment of a more materialistic, American lifestyle, his financial ambitions were not surprising.
With Yonatan identified as a rising star in the ranks of the IDF – along with Ehud Barak – the pressure and the spotlight were off Benjamin, who made the most of his time studying in the United States and starting to develop a career in business management. Possessed of good organizational skills, the determined and hugely ambitious middle son looked set for a successful career in business ventures that spanned the United States and Israel.
As Yonatan fought in the front line against the Syrians in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and Palestinian terrorism, his younger brother never matched his exploits in the army. By normal Israeli standards of military success, however, Benjamin was no failure. He served in the most prestigious commando unit, Sayeret Matkal, and took part in one of its most famous rescue operations.
On 9 May 1972, 16 members of Sayeret Matkal took part in the operation to end the hijacking of Sabena flight 571. Led by Ehud Barak, the commandos, disguised as technicians and wearing white overalls, stormed the aircraft at Lod Airport (later renamed Ben-Gurion Airport). Netanyahu was wounded in the exchange, when the gun of one of his fellow commandos went off by mistake. The passengers were rescued (although one, Miriam Anderson, later died from wounds sustained during the exchange of fire). The hijackers were either killed or arrested.
Despite this stunningly successful rescue operation, Benjamin Netanyahu’s army service remained overshadowed by his big brother’s. In truth, the younger Netanyahu had little problem with this. He was proud of Yonatan’s military service and wanted to emulate him and to serve Israel, but he didn’t display any signs of jealousy or demand greater recognition from his family for his own military record.
Instead, Benjamin tried to learn everything he could from his older brother. This was not confined to military matters. Considered by some to have been something of a philosopher and deep thinker, Yonatan passed on his knowledge to his brother either while he was home on leave or in letters.
Central to his thoughts was the feeling that it was better to live continually by the sword than to lose the State of Israel, a loss that would have meant the Jews becoming once again a stateless people wandering from country to country.
Fundamentally, Yonatan believed that you should never give in to terrorism. There could be no compromise with those who wished to destroy the nation. The young Benjamin was in complete agreement with his brother, and believed that a strong and robust system of deterrents was crucial to Israel’s survival. Events in 1973 confirmed their belief.
When the Yom Kippur War started on 6 October 1973 with the surprise attack by Egyptian and Syrian forces on Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu was studying in the United States. According to Israeli sources, Yonatan telephoned him to tell him that there was heavy fighting in the south along the Suez Canal area and in the north on the Golan Heights.2
Like many Israelis based in the United States in 1973, Netanyahu rushed to try to get back to Israel. This was no easy task, with thousands of Israelis at the airport in New York. Amid chaotic scenes, Netanyahu managed to board a flight for Tel Aviv. Back in Israel he found much of the country in a state of shock.
Questions about how the Egyptian and Syrian forces had been able to mount a coordinated attack on Israel without Israeli intelligence seemingly getting wind of it would come later. For now, it was clear that Israel was involved in a battle for its survival, and that the first days of the war had not gone well.
Benjamin Netanyahu played a minor role in the war. Yonatan, on the other hand, was in the thick of the battles on the Golan Heights. His reputation as a brave and tenacious fighter, and good leader of men, was further enhanced in the battles he fought on the Golan. For much of the time, Syrian forces intent on taking back the land they had lost in the 1967 Six Day War heavily outnumbered Yonatan’s men.
Eventually, the tide of the war turned in Israel’s favour and, with the help of military equipment flown in from the United States, the IDF was able to push the Egyptians and Syrians back before a UN ceasefire brought an end to the war. Although Israel emerged victorious, few Israelis recall the war in that light. Israel paid a high price to secure its survival: approximately 2,500 dead and more than 7,000 wounded. The lessons of the war would eventually be learned, but the impact on the politics of Israel was felt almost immediately.
In the Netanyahu family the very different war experiences of Yonatan and Benjamin arguably confirmed the belief that it would be the highly decorated eldest son who would go on to become a senior officer in the IDF, and from there parachute into national politics. It was also clear that if Benjamin ever wanted to enter politics, he would do so by more traditional civilian routes.
At this stage, however, Benjamin showed little interest in joining the political fray. At the end of the war he returned to the United States to finish his studies. After this, his aim was a very American one: to make money in business. Despite fulfilling his patriotic duty to Israel during the war, his mindset and career objectives were much more American-centric than Israeli. To all intents and purposes, he appeared to have settled for a life and a career in the United States.
Netanyahu’s main connection with his homeland was in his efforts to defend Israel and its policies in campus debates and later in the local media. From the outset, it was clear that he was something of a natural, engaging in debates with students and academics (including, on one occasion, the eminent Palestinian scholar Edward Said).
The local Israeli organizers of the debates could see straightaway that Netanyahu was in his element. He was also apparently without nerves. What Netanyahu refused to do was to be an effective spokesman for the Labour Party-led Israeli government. He objected to many of the policies of the government, believing them to be too soft and out of touch with reality.
With his family’s close connection to the revisionist Zionist movement along with the hawkish rhetoric he employed in debate, it was clear that Benjamin Netanyahu was a disciple of Menachem Begin and the Likud. The Likud had been formed by an alliance of several right-wing parties prior to the 1973 Knesset elections: Herut, the Liberal Party, the Free Centre, the National List and the Movement for Greater Israel.
The merging of these parties into one single party was seen as the best opportunity of challenging the Labour Party which had ruled Israel (in various guises) since 1948. This was soon put to the test in the 1973 Knesset elections which had originally been postponed because of the Yom Kippur War. When the rescheduled elections eventually took place on 31 December 1973, the Likud won 39 seats, which represented a significant increase from the combined number of votes the parties that eventually made up the Likud gained in the 1969 election. Although the Alignment (Labour Party and Mapam) won 51 seats, this total was down five seats from the previous election.
The results didn’t represent an electoral earthquake, but they did indicate that one day, perhaps soon, it was possible that Menachem Begin, who had been leader of the opposition in the Knesset since 1948, would become Prime Minister. There were many complex, long-term reasons for the decline of the Labour Party, but its apparent failure to successfully manage the Yom Kippur War and Israel’s security was at the forefront of people’s minds.3 In simple political terms, the fortunes of the Likud were on the up, and those of the Labour Party were in decline.
Benjamin Netanyahu shared the feelings of many Israelis that the government had let down the nation in the period prior to and during the Yom Kippur War. In his debates, he called for clear Israeli responses to the status of the Occupied Territories. With the political process of change back in Israel starting to gather momentum as the Labour-led government lurched from one crisis to another, opportunities would soon present themselves for the young Netanyahu.
Ben Nitai, as he preferred to call himself in the United States, was still undertaking all of these political activities as something of a hobby when, on 27 June 1976, an Air France aeroplane was reported to have been hijacked en route from Athens to Paris. The plane had originally departed Tel Aviv with a stopover in Athens before flying on to the French capital. The hijackers were from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and from German revolutionary groups.
After being diverted to Benghazi in Libya, it flew on to its final destination, Entebbe in Uganda. As was the norm, the hijackers demanded the release of pro-Palestinian militants, many of whom were held in Israeli jails. Despite Israel’s policy of not negotiating with terrorists, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin authorized negotiations to be opened – in order to gain an extension of the deadline before the hijackers started killing the hostages. That extension, from 1 to 4 July, helped give the IDF time to put together a daring rescue plan.
Operation Thunderbolt was a bold attempt to rescue the hostages by flying a unit of Israeli commandos to Uganda who would storm the terminal and free those being held. At the same time, another group of commandos was to disable the Ugandan Air Force planes that might have provided a threat to the Israeli aircraft. In the complex plan, which featured many of the top Israeli soldiers of their generation, Yonatan Netanyahu was put in command of the reconnaissance unit. His men were given the responsibility of storming the airport terminal where the hostages were being held.
With time running out for the hostages, the Israeli government gave the green light for the operation to go ahead. As Yonatan Netanyahu was sitting in an Israeli Air Force plane making its way down to Entebbe, Benjamin was in the United States continuing his studies. The contrast between the two couldn’t have been greater: Yonatan making final preparations for operations; Benjamin, thousands of miles away, with no idea that the Israelis were about to undertake a last-minute rescue mission.
The rescue operation went better than the IDF and the political leadership had dared hope. Three hostages were killed and several injured: a much lower figure than the planners of the operation had feared. The sole fatality among the Israeli forces was Yonatan Netanyahu, who was killed by a shot from a Ugandan soldier stationed in the control tower. The loss of Yonatan overshadowed a hugely successful military operation that became one of the most famous in Israeli history.
The death of his older brother remains to this day the worst thing to have happened to Benjamin Netanyahu, who took it upon himself to inform his parents of the news of Yonatan’s death. It is sometimes a little simplistic to suggest that the death of a close family member is life-changing for the family, but for Benjamin Netanyahu this was very much the case. There are two quite distinct Benjamin Netanyahu characters: the one before his brother’s death and the one after it.
In the aftermath of his brother’s death, Netanyahu vowed to achieve everything that Yonatan had been destined to do. Gone was the slightly goofy wanderer who sought a career in business management; now Netanyahu’s ambitions shifted to protecting his brother’s legacy. The importance of legacy is something that Netanyahu has always had one eye on. From there, he wished to develop Yonatan’s legacy into something practical that could serve Israel and the world. Lofty ambitions indeed, but Netanyahu had a clear plan and a vision as to how to make it happen.
His plans involved the setting up of the ‘Jonathan Institute’ in memory of his brother. The work of the institute focused on research on counter-terrorism strategies and the dissemination of this work within Israel and to international audiences. The institute became internationally known when, in the summer of 1979, it hosted its first international conference on terrorism, which Netanyahu had energetically organized.
In retrospect, the list of speakers makes for impressive reading. Netanyahu had pulled out all the stops, using his contacts from the United States to draw in big names: George H. W. Bush, George Shultz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ed Meese and William Webster all came from the US to attend the conference.4 From Israel, Yitzhak Rabin and Moshe Arens were present, and the Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin addressed the conference.
From the American side, the list read like a who’s who of the era of the administration of President Ronald Reagan. For Netanyahu, the conference – and others he subsequently organized – offered an excellent networking opportunity for him to further develop contacts with the Republican Party in the United States.
Almost everybody who attended the initial conference had heard of Yonatan, and knew the story of the Entebbe raid. Few of them, however, knew much about his younger brother, Benjamin Netanyahu. All of this was about to change.
Netanyahu’s attitude towards terrorism was born out of the death of Yonatan. His writings and speeches on the topic pointed to a deeply held belief that it was morally wrong to talk to terrorists. Even after he was elected Prime Minister in 1996, his position on terrorism had still not undergone any revision.
In essence, he still believed that a military and economic solution was possible for ridding the world of terrorist organizations. Militarily, this meant attacking the infrastructure and personnel of those organizations; economically, it meant stopping the supply of funds to them.
So, as Netanyahu stood up and reached out to shake Arafat’s hand on 4 September 1996, he still felt that he was letting his family down by shaking the hand of the man he regarded as the godfather of international terrorism. To some extent Netanyahu was acting for the assembled Israeli and international press, but his loathing of Yasser Arafat was very real.
This did not bode well for the peace process, and specifically for the negotiations that were due to start concerning an IDF withdrawal from Hebron.