'Bibi may have changed'

News is breaking this morning that Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has caved in to US pressure. Sources report that he has tacitly agreed a freeze on the controversial plans to build several hundred new Jewish homes in Ramat Shlomo, East Jerusalem. This shows a flicker of hope. Not only does it — tentatively — bode well for renewed peace talks with the Palestinians, it also shows that Bibi may have changed. Or at least, he has learned from past mistakes.

In 1996, when Netanyahu was last in office, Bill Clinton faced him down on a similar issue. Netanyahu, through evasive political maneuvering, sought to both placate and defy the US administration. The result was disastrous for the Israeli leader; at the first opportunity, the Israeli public voted him out of office, citing his handling of US relations as their primary motivation.

This time round, history has repeated itself — but thankfully, only up to a point. Netanyahu, in moving towards a compromise with the Americans that will enable forward movement, has shown that at last his traditional belligerence has been tempered by pragmatism.

Nothing is ever certain in the middle east. Tomorrow’s news may demonstrate that Bibi has changed his mind, and re-authorised the settlement construction in the face of US pressure. But today, at least, it seems that we’re looking at a new Bibi. And we can warm our hands around a small — and increasingly rare — flame of hope.

NB: The reports on which this blog post was based later proved premature. Netanyahu did not, in fact, cave in; he simply offered a temporary freeze on construction, which did not satisfy Washington. For Netanyahu to drop the building plans completely would have put him in extremely hot water with members of his coalition back in Israel. Subsequently, the Israeli premier stated that ‘construction in Jerusalem is like construction in Tel Aviv and we have clarified that for the American government’. So the story rumbles on. >sigh< –JWS