15

Prime Minister? Of Course Not

Despite his initial skepticism, Shamir wanted Netanyahu to remain at the United Nations. He had enough bright young stars among the Likud “princes” and was in no hurry to see him back in Israel. Bibi had other plans.

Throughout his six years in office (1986–1992), Shamir was continuously under fire. From the left, his coalition partner, Labor leader Shimon Peres, kept trying to foist diplomatic initiatives on him. In April 1987 Shamir vetoed the “London Agreement” that Peres had signed with Jordan’s King Hussein to launch an international peace conference. Shamir likened the conference to “a gallows,” where Israel’s neck would be in the noose. From the right, he was constantly attacked by Likud ministers David Levy and Ariel Sharon, who accused him of capitulating to Peres. At Likud Central Committee meetings, their supporters heckled the prime minister.

Likud was in a generational struggle, and Bibi needed to position himself in the party hierarchy if he didn’t want the princes to get a march on him. He spent a large part of his time putting out feelers to the party. Central Committee members visiting New York received VIP treatment, including a personal briefing from the ambassador and a tour of the UN building, where they would sit with the Israeli delegation in the General Assembly.

“Everyone was charmed in the first meeting by this eloquent leader who spoke about values and ideology, not party business,” recalled Gil Samsonov, then head of the Likud Young Guard. “He got up and pointed at the map behind him. ‘We have only one state,’ he said. ‘You have to think what’s best for the nation.’”¹

Another upcoming Likudnik visiting New York was the future president Reuven Rivlin, who was then chairman of Likud’s Jerusalem branch. Netanyahu confided in him that he knew the princes would try and trip him up. Rivlin, impressed, offered to help back in Jerusalem. They would eventually become bitter rivals. “The princes thought Bibi was just a lightweight demagogue,” Rivlin later recalled. “I warned them he would conquer Likud. They laughed.”

These meetings were followed up with visits back in Israel, where Netanyahu began building his camp. He was recruiting his team. Embassy press officers Eyal Arad and Odelya Karmon would go on to work on his first campaign. He attended reunions of Revisionist veterans, winning them over with his extensive knowledge of Jabotinsky’s writings and his insistence that their time had come.

Ministers began to pay attention. Arens was eager to have Bibi back, but others tried to dissuade him from running for national office. They sounded him out about the Jerusalem or Tel Aviv mayorships and the chairmanship of the Zionist Organization. Netanyahu brushed these offers away. He was headed for the Knesset. Besides, serving as Israel’s chief protector in the American media had become less fun.

In December 1987, violent demonstrations broke out in Gaza, spreading quickly to the West Bank. Dozens of Palestinians were killed when troops responded to stone-throwing with live fire. Hundreds of foreign journalists rushed to cover the clashes. It had been five years since the First Lebanon War, and Israel was once again being portrayed as the cruel Goliath. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s decision to give soldiers clubs and issue orders for them to “break hands and legs” failed to quell the Intifada (Uprising) and hardly improved optics. Twenty years after Israel had replaced Egypt and Jordan as occupiers of Gaza and the West Bank, the Palestinians were no longer prepared to remain under occupation.

In interviews, Netanyahu accused the Palestinians of wanting to destroy all of Israel and the PLO of being behind the violence. (The latter was not true, as the Intifada had begun spontaneously, though the PLO and other Palestinian organizations would later exert some control.) Bibi was outside his comfort zone. It was much more difficult to portray rock-wielding youths as agents of Syria, Libya, and the Soviet Union, as his theories of fighting terror didn’t fit the new situation. Anyway, he had decided to leave before the Intifada and was already on the next stage of his career.

In his last months in New York, Netanyahu met and consulted with Republican campaign strategists, mapping his next move. He met twice with Rabbi Schneerson, who had already promised his support—though he had urged Bibi to continue his work at the United Nations. “You can continue serving her until the Messiah,” the Rebbe said.²

He had spent six years in America’s centers of power, learning the arts of television, lobbying, and fundraising. He had acquired a taste for good living, for being chauffeured and eating in fine restaurants, where someone else picked up the tab. It was another habit he took back with him to Israel, where his aides became accustomed to paying up after he left restaurants. What had he accomplished for Israel during this period?

It was Arens, Shamir, and other senior advisers who had defused the crises in the US-Israeli relationship and achieved the breakthroughs. Netanyahu had become a star of the air waves, the darling of Republican circles and the Jewish American elite, but he had had little lasting influence in the highest echelons of decision making. He was little more than a passive passenger and partisan commentator on the wide roller-coaster that took the two countries on their ups and downs. For all his high profile on television and cozy lunches with newspaper columnists, the coverage of Israel—from Lebanon to the Intifada—was hardly favorable in that period.

The United States was steadily inching toward engagement with the Palestinians. Shortly after leaving Washington, Netanyahu turned on his benefactor, the pro-Israel Secretary Shultz, who had met with two Arab Americans, Professors Edward Said and Ibrahim Abu Lughod, members of the PLO-affiliated Palestine National Council. Netanyahu claimed he had brought forward his departure to protest Shultz’s paving the way for “a PLO state right in the heart of Israel, threatening our very security, our very future.”³ In December 1988, following Yasser Arafat’s announcement that the PLO was renouncing the use of terror and accepting the two-state solution, the United States entered formal talks with the PLO. It was tantamount to the failure of everything that Netanyahu had worked for in the United States.

Netanyahu’s real achievement was building up his new hasbara style of diplomacy, in which aggressive and relentless public championing of Israel’s cause became an end unto itself. When the policies of the Likud governments he served failed to gain support in the United States, he blamed a lack of motivation—in others—to argue in the policies’ favor. Ultimately, Netanyahu had done a brilliant job of representing Likud’s Israel, but he had mainly convinced the already convinced. Now it was time to reap that harvest.

THE RESIGNATION’S TIMING had nothing to do with Shultz. Elections were scheduled for November, and Netanyahu needed time to build up his base and run for a spot on the Likud’s Knesset candidate list. Every stage of the campaign was meticulously planned. Bibi wanted to launch in a blaze of publicity. In those days, an in-depth political interview show, Moked (Focus), was broadcast on Thursday nights on the sole television channel. It was a prestigious venue that was usually reserved for the president, prime minister, and senior officials, not usually for aspirants. After weeks of talks with the producers, Netanyahu’s team secured a March slot.

On the afternoon of the broadcast, Netanyahu was so busy briefing political reporters that he barely found the time to call the Foreign Ministry and officially resign. By then he had done more television interviews than anyone in Israeli politics. He was perfectly prepared when veteran interviewer Yoram Ronen asked him if he planned to run for prime minister. “Prime Minister? Of course not. We have an excellent prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir.”⁴ Shamir wasn’t amused at the hasty departure of his ambassador, but many in Likud were fascinated by the shiny new creature.

The party’s leader tried to befriend Netanyahu. Levy had met him in New York and was offended by his lack of respect. Sharon invited him for a meal at his farm and remarked later that he didn’t trust him. As Arens’s protégé, Bibi was expected to join the Shamir-Arens camp, but he tried to pass himself off as a nonaffiliated candidate.

His small and dedicated team included his former press officers, Arad and Karmon; his second cousin David Shimron, as legal adviser; and a few carefully selected party members who had volunteered their services. Netanyahu’s American friends had already donated handsomely to his campaign fund, and the team set about arranging a marathon of meetings with as many of the 2,200 Central Committee members as possible. He had no job at the time but was taken care of. Bibi and Fleur lived in a central Tel Aviv apartment owned by an Australian property developer, John Gandel. The campaign used a room in the offices of a local tech firm. A Chabad Hasid who was a wealthy diamond dealer put a car and driver at Netanyahu’s disposal.

Netanyahu spent his mornings meeting party members in the coffee shop of a Tel Aviv hotel. After lunch he would be driven out of town for meetings with local branches. Other candidates actually visited the cramped branch offices; Netanyahu preferred to hire event halls, where he could entertain members of a number of different branches at the same time. He crisscrossed the country, often sleeping overnight in supporters’ homes. His stump speech included anecdotes from his days in the United Nations and dire warnings of the consequences of relinquishing parts of the West Bank to the PLO, which would be able to shoot down civilian airliners from the hills of Judea and Samaria.

Rival candidates and journalists ridiculed Netanyahu’s fastidious habits. He traveled everywhere with a pile of crisp blue shirts, which he changed every few hours, and he used an electric razor in the car to eliminate his five o’clock shadow. It set him apart from the typical rumpled and informal Israeli politician. But instead of seeing him as a dandy, party members were impressed.

The 120 members of the Knesset are elected by a nationwide system of proportional representation. Voters vote for one party. Each party selects a numbered list of candidates, and these are allocated Knesset seats according to their share of the vote. Being high on the list makes the candidates “safe” and denotes their importance and popularity within the party. From 1977 to 1996, Likud Central Committee members selected the list by “the sevens” system. In the first free-for-all round, candidates competed for a spot on a panel of thirty-five names, with Central Committee members voting for ten candidates each.

Then came five consecutive rounds of voting in which members ranked five batches of seven. Essentially, it meant five rounds of horse-trading in which candidates were able to vie for the highest spots they aspired to without angering supporters of more powerful candidates. The top spot on the list went to Likud’s leader, and other spots were reserved for members of other parties, such as the Liberals, that were affiliated with Likud. Dropping to the fifth “seven” meant relegation to the upper forties and probably no Knesset seat.

With most serving MKs already in the deals, newcomers relied on their connections with one of the main camps to boost their prospects. Candidates typically spent more time deal-making than canvassing. Netanyahu, who was affiliated with the Shamir-Arens camp, nevertheless spent months wooing members of the Sharon and Levy camps as well. He knew that he had many rivals even within the Shamir-Arens camp, especially the princes Ehud Olmert, Dan Meridor, and Ronny Milo, who were already MKs.

Netanyahu wasn’t the only prominent newcomer. A year before, the “prince of princes,” Benny Begin, had joined Likud. Menachem Begin’s son had long kept out of politics. At forty-five, the ponderous and prematurely old geologist was running his first race. Although he had his father’s name, his looks, and even his voice, he lacked the great leader’s oratorical skills. Fanatically honest and frugal, he refused to make deals or spend campaign money. He traveled by bus to distant branches of the party, entering without fanfare and making short, low-key speeches. He was a Begin, and that was enough.

On June 29, the first round of voting took place in a daylong jamboree at the Herzliya Country Club. One of Bibi’s donors had hired an air-conditioned RV, and there he met members of the Likud Central Committee while the rest sweated outside. As evening fell, the results were announced. Netanyahu, who had arrived from the United States only four months earlier, came in first with 1,408 votes, overtaking Begin, Arens, and Sharon. The second-biggest surprise was Levy reaching only sixth place. The housing minister was furious. He had not challenged Shamir for leadership, as he believed they had a deal that Shamir’s supporters would all vote for him in return. Once again Levy felt cheated. “We’ll meet in the sevens,” he hissed.

Netanyahu now faced a dilemma. In “the sevens,” the competition would be much closer as candidates fought for survival and each camp sought to push its people higher on the list. After his incredible showing in the first round, he was a target for rival camps. Levy was out for vengeance, and he had fixed on Netanyahu as the representative of the young, entitled upstarts of the Shamir-Arens camp. Bibi needed to decide what spot on the list to compete for. He toyed with the idea of going for number one in the first seven, but wiser heads counseled him not to push his luck. He put himself forward for the fifth spot. Any spot in the first seven would be a tremendous accomplishment for a newcomer, and he would still have to beat one of Sharon’s lieutenants, David Magen, who was vying for the same spot.

This time he needed support from the Shamir camp, especially Arens, who ordered his wavering supporters to rank Netanyahu in the first seven. He scraped into fifth with 895 votes, just 8 more than Magen. Levy was first, Sharon second, and Arens made do with third. Begin closed the first seven.

Likud’s national election campaign was run by the princes, who weren’t interested in using Bibi’s skills. He was put in charge of what was then considered a relatively minor role: overseeing polling and fundraising abroad. On a donor’s recommendation, Netanyahu brought over Republican polling expert Frank Luntz. At twenty-eight, Luntz was yet to become the GOP guru of the 1990s, and few Likudniks had time for his presentations. He did, however, become a lifelong admirer of Netanyahu’s style of messaging.

Likud won narrowly on November 1. The party received forty seats, one more than Labor. More importantly, the right-wing and religious parties held a small majority of sixty-three seats. But instead of forming a coalition in line with his own ideology, Shamir decided to form another national unity government with Labor. His Likud critics accused him of joining Labor to avoid having to give Levy and Sharon key ministries. Years later, Shamir claimed that his main reason for forming a national unity government was that the religious parties had demanded that Israel change its citizenship legislation to allow only those who had been born as Jews, or who had undergone a strict Orthodox conversion to Judaism, to emigrate to Israel. Leaders of American Jewry, where the non-Orthodox Reform and Conservative movements were the majority, warned that this rule would mean an irreparable rift. It was the most significant secret intervention the Jewish Diaspora had ever conducted in Israeli politics.

The deal with Labor meant fewer cabinet posts for Likud. Peres became finance minister, and Rabin remained in the Defense Ministry. Arens, Shamir’s heir-apparent, became foreign minister. Levy remained housing minister, and Sharon stayed at trade and industry. Both were angry at their lack of promotion, especially as Shamir promoted the princes Meridor, Milo, and Olmert to minister positions. Netanyahu and Begin had ranked higher than the princes in the Likud list. Shamir didn’t care. He refused to appoint rookie MKs as ministers. An enraged Benzion Netanyahu visited the prime minister demanding that Bibi receive a cabinet post; Shamir refused point-blank.

Arens agreed with Shamir, but he took pity on Bibi, who was calling him “three times a day.” He wasn’t prepared to spend time as a back-bencher. Arens suggested that Netanyahu be made deputy at the Foreign Ministry. Shamir relented.

“DEPUTY MINISTER” MAY look good on a business card, but in Israeli politics it’s usually a title given as compensation to a disgruntled MK. Most deputy ministers have no official responsibilities and must be content with whatever tasks their minister chooses to give them. Sworn in on December 22, Netanyahu was returning to the ministry where he’d been an employee only nine months earlier. His new role didn’t give him power over the diplomats, and, mindful of how Netanyahu had treated their colleagues in Washington and New York, they avoided him, as did key advisers on Arens’s staff.

Arens brought him into meetings and occasionally took him on foreign trips, but the first months were frustrating. Netanyahu spent much of his time prowling the offices and studios of foreign television networks, haranguing journalists over their coverage of the still raging Intifada. When Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks, he rushed to the scene or hospital, demanding the international media give equal coverage to Jewish victims.

Bibi continued meeting party members, lecturing small groups on the necessity of instituting harsher measures against Palestinian rioters. Most of the members of his 1988 campaign team were too busy in their new jobs to attend. A new unofficial aide volunteered to maintain the “Netanyahu camp.” Avigdor Lieberman, then known to everyone as “Evet,” was nine years Bibi’s junior, a low-level Likud activist who had emigrated ten years earlier from Kishinev in the Soviet Union (now Chişinău, the capital of Moldova).

Lieberman, who would become Netanyahu’s right-hand man over the next decade, has often been described as a thug. Nothing could be further from reality. His bulky frame, dense black beard, startling blue eyes, and gruff, heavily accented voice are intimidating, as are his extreme views. As a student he worked as a nightclub bouncer. But few Israeli politicians, with the exception of Netanyahu, are as widely read and intellectually minded as Lieberman. In those years, Lieberman, who had just moved with his young family to a West Bank settlement, bonded with Netanyahu both ideologically and personally. Evet also opened Bibi’s eyes to the electoral potential of the Israeli-Russian community, a large majority of whom held hawkish views. In early 1989, he tried to get the Foreign Ministry to launch a program encouraging more Jews to arrive from the Soviet Union, but as the government was trying to reestablish diplomatic relations with Moscow, which had been cut off in 1967, there was little interest in his proposals. A few months later it happened anyway.

Meanwhile, an unofficial role had opened for Netanyahu as Israel’s bulldog against the new American administration, which was proving to be increasingly critical of the Shamir government.

A month after the new Shamir government had been sworn in, the Reagan era ended with the inauguration of President George H. W. Bush on January 20, 1989. The administration’s ties with Israel had taken a hit two months earlier with the recognition of the PLO, and, as James Baker replaced Shultz as secretary of state, worse beckoned. Bush and Baker had been among Israel’s main critics in the Reagan White House, and now they were running the show.

Arens feared the worst and tried to get Shamir to present an Israeli peace plan in his first meeting with President Bush in April 1989. Taking the initiative, however, was against Shamir’s instincts. In the key preparation meeting with Shamir, Arens took Netanyahu along “for support.” Netanyahu helped to convince Shamir of the necessity of appearing to be proactive in the United States. Shamir agreed to propose autonomy talks with a Palestinian delegation whose members would be selected by Egypt and Jordan. At the White House, Bush and Baker seemed receptive to the idea, and Netanyahu was sent to sell the American media and Congress on the initiative and then go on to Ottawa, to try and get the Canadian government on board.

But Baker, along with the Egyptian regime, began pushing for a Palestinian delegation that would include PLO members. Bush and Baker shared the view that as the recipient of the largest annual sum of American foreign aid, Israel could stand to be lectured on its policies. Of all places, Baker chose an AIPAC conference in May to admonish the Shamir government, in front of hundreds of Israel’s supporters.

“For Israel, now is the time to lay aside once and for all the unrealistic vision of a Greater Israel,” Baker intoned. He called upon Israel to “forswear annexation,” to “stop settlement activity,” and to “reach out to the Palestinians as neighbors who deserve political rights.” He had encouraging words for Shamir’s initiatives and stern messages for the Palestinians as well, calling upon the latter to renounce violence “in all languages, not just those addressed to the West.”⁵ But it was the blunt admonishments to Israel that naturally were the focus of the speech. In private, Shamir described Baker as “a new hangman for the Jewish people.”

The next eighteen months were to see a gradual escalation of administration pressure on Israel. Baker went behind the backs of Shamir and Arens, trying, with the help of the Egyptian government, to get the leaders of the Labor Party, Peres and Rabin, to sign off on a proposal for talks with a Palestinian delegation. Peres especially played along, quietly promising the Americans that should Shamir refuse, he could form a government of his own. Shamir was under intense pressure from Sharon and Levy, who for their own political purposes were threatening insurrection within Likud should the prime minister deliver any concession. Baker was effectively provoking a coalition crisis in Jerusalem.

Netanyahu was relegated to a supporting role. High-level diplomacy went on mainly between Arens and Baker. Arens’s diplomatic adviser Sallai Meridor (the younger brother of Dan Meridor, and therefore in the princes’ camp) and Shamir’s favorite, Elyakim Rubinstein, who by then was a cabinet secretary, were entrusted with relaying sensitive messages and draft proposals between Jerusalem and Washington. Bibi’s job was shoring up support for Israel’s positions in Congress and in the media.

There were now fewer doors open to him at the State Department, however. He no longer had anywhere near the access that he had enjoyed during Shultz’s tenure. He found himself meeting with a new group of advisers and Middle East experts who had been appointed to their posts during that period. Key members of this new group were different from the old generation of WASPish “Arabists” who had been instinctively hostile to Israel. Dennis Ross, Aaron David Miller, Daniel Kurtzer, and other American officials who entered the fray during those years and would remain involved in Middle Eastern diplomacy for years, were Jewish and broadly pro-Israel—just not Bibi’s Israel.

For Netanyahu it was like being back at high school in Philadelphia, with all those weak American Jews who would never serve in the IDF, risking their lives for the Jewish state. They all felt that Netanyahu was condescending toward them, and he did little to change that impression. In his diplomatic memoirs The Much Too Promised Land, Miller recalled Bibi “yelling” at them: “I closed my eyes during his tirade and remembered my high school tennis coach yelling at me for throwing my racket.” Netanyahu accused them of interfering in Israeli politics. “You can afford to give the Arabs the benefit of the doubt from the safety and security of Washington. Out here in our neighborhood, we can’t and won’t,” he said to Miller.⁶

Netanyahu had a point. Baker was encouraging Peres and Rabin to take on Shamir, but Bibi never wanted to accept that the “unbreakable relationship” between the United States and Israel was also a vastly unequal one. Neither would he keep these thoughts private—he used every available media platform to lambast the administration’s policy toward Israel. He claimed that the PLO was pulling the wool over American eyes and had not abandoned terror. Even when he was proven right, as when an attempted seaborne attack by a PLO faction on Israel’s coast in June 1990 ended the US-PLO dialogue after only eighteen months, he continued to get under Baker’s skin.

At one point, after Netanyahu publicly said that “U.S. policy in the Middle East is based on lies and distortions,” Baker ordered him barred from entering the State Department. Robert Gates, who was deputy national security adviser, did the same. “I was offended by his glibness and his criticism of U.S. policy—not to mention his arrogance and outlandish ambition,” Gates wrote in his autobiography. “I told National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft that Bibi (Netanyahu) ought not be allowed back on White House grounds.”⁷

AS NETANYAHU’S RELATIONSHIP with the Bush administration crumbled, his life at home was crumbling, too. Bibi and Fleur’s marriage had been difficult for a while. In their last year in New York, they had separated for months. Fleur felt neglected by Bibi’s frequent absences. Netanyahu was constantly traveling back to Israel or addressing audiences across the United States. Fleur had given up her job, had converted to Judaism, and was undergoing fertility treatments, and it had all taken its toll. But she agreed to reconcile and joined Bibi in Israel.

Netanyahu tried to include Fleur in his campaign, but she had little to contribute to the intense canvassing across the country. She was by his side on the night he came first in the Likud panel vote, but as one party member who was close to the couple at the time said, “It was clear that it wasn’t her scene. She was too smart just to be the woman waiting at home for Bibi to come back late at night.” Fleur tried hard to fit in, lunching with other Likud wives, including Shulamit Shamir, and befriending her stepdaughter Noa. But she remained lonely and out of place.

One American friend who has remained close to Fleur and Bibi attributed the split to “a lack of maturity on both their sides. They could have worked harder. She was an extraordinary asset to him and Bibi recognized that, but he’s just not that kind of a social person.” Fleur left in early 1989, returning to New York, where she worked at Ron Lauder’s investment company. She later married Leonard Harlan, the founder of the successful private investment firm Castle Harlan. “They both traded down,” observed their friend.

Bibi never felt comfortable in Tel Aviv. On his own once again, he returned to Jerusalem. At forty, he was twice divorced and living with his parents. With a crisis engulfing the government, it looked as if he might lose his job as well.

SHAMIR CONTINUED STONEWALLING Baker regarding his demand to negotiate with a Palestinian delegation whose members included residents of East Jerusalem and deportees affiliated with the PLO. On March 3, 1990, Shamir summoned Likud ministers to discuss their position. Peres was threatening to bring the government down if they refused the Americans. Arens recommended saying yes to Baker. Netanyahu, who had just returned from Washington, disagreed, arguing that acquiescing to Baker’s demand would be tantamount to agreeing to divide Jerusalem. Arens was hurt by Bibi’s “uncollegiality,” though, as always, he would forgive him. Shamir seemed incapable of deciding.

Ten days later, accusing Peres of undermining the government, Shamir had fired him in a cabinet meeting, and the other Labor ministers had immediately resigned. Shamir would not back down, even though Peres had already reached secret agreements with the ultra-Orthodox parties. Two days later, the government fell in a no-confidence motion, and President Chaim Herzog gave Peres three weeks to form a new government. A mad scramble ensued between Labor and Likud for defectors from either side. On June 12, Peres had a majority on paper and was ready to present his new government to the Knesset. The five-member Agudat Yisrael, an ultra-Orthodox party, had signed a coalition agreement, but two of its MKs disappeared. Peres had already started appointing ministers, but as the hours passed, and the missing MKs failed to turn up, he was forced to notify the Knesset that he still lacked a majority. Later it transpired that a fax had arrived that night from Rabbi Schneerson in New York ordering the two MKs not to join a left-wing government.

Once again, Peres’s prime ministerial designs were dashed. His colleague and rival Rabin, who had lost his position as defense minister, was scathing in his criticism, branding the farce “the stinking trick.” Two months later, it was Shamir who presented a new government—the narrow right-wing coalition he had preferred not to form in 1988.

Secretary Baker, who had waited for a more favorable outcome (from his perspective), lashed out in a congressional hearing two days later, accusing Israel of lacking interest in the diplomatic process. “Everybody over there should know that the telephone number (of the White House switchboard) is 1-202-456-1414. When you’re serious about peace, call us.”⁸

TO KEEP HIS new coalition together, Shamir had to reshuffle his cabinet. Arens moved back to the Defense Ministry, and Levy was appointed as foreign minister. It was unthinkable at first that Netanyahu would remain deputy minister under Levy, who regarded him as a dangerous upstart. Shamir agreed that Bibi move with Arens to Defense. But Netanyahu realized that at the Kirya, the military headquarters in Tel Aviv, he would have even less to do. Deputy defense ministers usually dealt with humdrum tasks, such as civil defense and logistics. Not for the last time, Bibi applied his charms to Levy, promising fealty. In a moment of weakness, the vain Levy allowed him to stay.

His cooperation lasted barely weeks. Netanyahu was too independent and he effortlessly outshone Levy, who didn’t speak English. Levy’s advisers convinced him that Bibi was a “plant” of the Arens-Shamir camp. Levy decided not to take him on his first visit to Washington and ordered him not to give interviews to the American media during his absence. Bibi began to wonder whether he hadn’t made a mistake in not joining Arens.

But one of his big shining moments was about to come.

In May 1990, in a meeting with American Jewish leaders, Netanyahu was grilled over the latest purchase by a Jewish settler group of a building in East Jerusalem—a church building that had been converted into a yeshiva dormitory, leading to criticism from the Bush administration. He answered, sardonically, “You’re right. It’s a big problem for us now. But it will blow over in a week. There’s a much bigger problem that won’t go away. Saddam Hussein is the Middle East’s, and Israel’s, number one problem.”⁹

Netanyahu has always maintained that the Palestinian issue is a diversion, not a central problem in the region. In the 1980s, Syria and the Soviet Union were the real issues. In the 1990s, it became Iraq, and since the beginning of the twenty-first century, he has focused on Iran. In this case, at least, he was onto something. Iraqi president Saddam Hussein would become the world’s problem in three months when it invaded Kuwait. The Bush administration rushed to build an international coalition, including Arab nations, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was indeed a diversion it didn’t need.

Saddam had threatened to “burn half of Israel,” and he had an arsenal of long-range Russian Scud missiles. Intelligence analysts feared they could be equipped with chemical warheads. Israelis were given gas masks and atropine syringes to protect themselves from poison gas. Netanyahu prepared a detailed contingency plan on handling the international media in the event such an attack occurred.

In the early hours of January 17, 1991, the US coalition began its bombardment of Iraqi targets. Israelis were ordered to carry their gas masks everywhere and prepare sealed rooms in their homes. At 3:00 a.m. on January 18, the first salvo of Scud missiles hit Tel Aviv’s suburbs.

Over the next forty days, thirty-nine missiles fell on Israel. Netanyahu spent the war rushing between television studios in Jerusalem, giving dozens of interviews daily to networks from around the world. He promised that Israel would retaliate, though he never specified where or when, and compared the threat of poison gas on Israel to the gas chambers used by Germany half a century earlier to exterminate Jews.

Yasser Arafat’s PLO had thrown its lot in with Iraq, and as the missiles flew over the West Bank, Palestinians gathered on rooftops, cheering the Iraqi dictator for striking the Zionists. For Netanyahu it was a public relations bonanza. Finally, here was proof that the Palestinians were not a poor, oppressed people, but part of a much larger Arab world intent on destroying the Jewish state. In interviews, using a map that showed the missile trajectory from Iraq to Israel, he spread his hands to show the breadth of the Arab lands, and then covered tiny Israel with his thumb.

Deputy Foreign Minister Netanyahu on CNN during the Gulf War in 1991. He insisted on continuing the interview with his gas mask on.

Standard-issue gas masks had the large filter in front, leaving the wearer nearly inaudible. Netanyahu obtained a mask with a side filter, through which he could be heard clearly. Finally, in the third week of the war, a missile raid caught him in CNN’s Jerusalem studio. He persuaded reporter Linda Scherzer to interview him with their masks on. You could hear Netanyahu’s broad smile under the mask. “I must say, this is the darnedest way to do an interview,” he laughed. “What it does show, however, is the threat that Israel faces. I cannot tell you when, I cannot tell you how, but Israel will defend itself.”¹⁰

But Israel didn’t respond. Shamir and his ministers agonized over launching a counterstrike. Bush demanded that Israel not jeopardize his international coalition by attacking Iraq. On January 19, the cabinet held a rare Shabbat meeting. The pilots were already sitting on the runway, waiting to take off and bomb the launch sites. Shamir backed down. The United States promised it was bombing the launchers and refused to open an air corridor for the Israeli attack. But Scuds continued to hit Tel Aviv. The IDF planned to land an airborne division in western Iraq, to hunt and destroy the elusive mobile launchers the Americans failed to locate. But Bush was adamant, and Shamir hoped that backing down would at least help to relieve diplomatic pressures after the war.

Netanyahu was Israel’s spokesman to the world during those weeks. Levy became incensed as reports from Israel’s embassies around the world, and letters from Jewish leaders, all praising Bibi, piled up on his desk. But Netanyahu was seething as well. He was furious about his lack of influence on decision making and having to deliver empty promises that Israel would retaliate.

Ultimately, Netanyahu’s public relations operation had little effect, besides making him a bigger star in the international media. He even had a cameo role in Frederick Forsyth’s Gulf War suspense novel, The Fist of God. But few Israelis at the time were exposed to foreign television networks, and fame abroad didn’t boost his political prospects at home. It had been a frustrating war for Israelis—the first in which they had been attacked, taken casualties, and not fought back. And the Bush administration’s policy toward Israel did not change after the war. Bush had acquired an appetite for fixing the Middle East’s problems, and his pressure on the Shamir government resumed almost immediately.

But the First Gulf War was a pivotal period in Bibi’s life for another reason altogether.