There are three keys to understanding Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu, the long-serving Israeli Prime Minister currently visiting Australia. Those are the influence of his father, the killing of his brother while rescuing Israelis from terrorist kidnappers, and his work for the Boston Consulting Group in the US in the 1980s.
Combining these three elements with a lively mind, a fearless and driven nationalism – and a spectacular personal life with three marriages and highly publicised affairs – provides some insight into this 67-year-old’s extraordinary impact on the Middle East, and on US and world affairs.
This insight may even extend to understanding the lower key, but nevertheless real, consequence of the first-ever visit to Australia by a serving Israeli Prime Minister. According to Allan Gyngell, a former head of the Office of National Assessments – Australia’s premier intelligence agency – Mr Netanyahu is here “to break through the geographical bonds of the Middle East and the US,” and wants to “cement something broader”.
Netanyahu has also flown to the other end of the world “to shore up support from significant supporters of Israel in the international system”, says Mr Gyngell, the first executive director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy, a think tank launched by Frank Lowy, who created a global shopping centre empire and is one of Israel’s most powerful supporters.
Given this track record, whatever Prime Minister Netanyahu does here during his four-day visit – meeting the great and the good, addressing community groups and more intimate gatherings – will be interesting to observe.
He will be encountering some division among Australian politicians about his obdurate approach to demands for a future two-state solution – that is, Israel and a demilitarised Palestinian state – to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Netanyahu can expect support from Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The latter has criticised the UN for what he regards as a one-sided Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements on the West Bank, while at the same time Mr Turnbull says he backs the long-heralded, but never achieved, two state solution.
Writing on Wednesday – the day Netanyahu jetted into Australia – Mr Turnbull castigated the UN and those who he said “insisted government take the side of those in the international community who seek to chastise Israel – and it alone – for the continuing failure of the peace process”.
Further, Mr Turnbull does not support recognising a separate state of Palestine, something several Labor elders, including former Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Bob Hawke, have done in the past few weeks. Labor Leader Bill Shorten, up to now regarded as a strong supporter of Israel, plans to confront Mr Netanyahu about Israel’s scheduled expansion of thousands of new settlement units in the West Bank during their discussion.
Former Labor foreign ministers Gareth Evans and Bob Carr have added their support to the Hawke-Rudd call for Australia to join 137 other countries and recognise a separate Palestine. Evans and other Labor luminaries now confront the presence here of the man who has been front and centre of Israel’s hawkish policy towards the Palestinian issue for the last decade.
Tracing through the roll-call of Israeli leaders in its 70-year history, including David Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, Yitzak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon and now Netanyahu, an observer would arguably have to reach back to Ben Gurion, founder of the State of Israel, to find comparable influence compared with that exercised by Netanyahu.
Read the full article by Andrew Clark at the Australian Financial Review.