Doing the right thing
In his second term in office, Netanyahu should not try to please everyone
"You can never make a second first impression", is a well-known American saying. But Benjamin Netanyahu has an opportunity to do just that.
Netanyahu's first term in office has been described in different colors by different people, but most - including Netanyahu himself - would agree that it could have been better. The most regrettable aspect that characterized his first term was Netanyahu's effort to please all of the people, all of the time. He tried to satisfy his constituency and made great efforts to please the media, the opposition, the international community, the Americans and even the Palestinians. The end result: No one was satisfied, especially the Palestinians.
Netanyahu learned that you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time. Hence, he should stop trying to do so.
This time around Netanyahu needs to concentrate on doing what he knows is right.
Israel and its American ally clearly have a list of urgent issues to address. These include the global economic crisis and the imminent nuclear threat. The establishment of a Palestinian state is not of top priority. In fact, the Palestinian state may be a non-issue.
If the Palestinians wanted to declare statehood, the international community led by the UN and perhaps even the US would probably accept them as a state among the family of nations. So why don't the Palestinians declare statehood? Because they want much more than to just establish the 22nd Arab state in the Middle East. They want to jeopardize the only Jewish one. That is something Netanyahu is set to prevent.
Netanyahu is a man of vision and historical perspective. In the late 1980s, well before September 11th, he warned the West of the perils of terrorism and identified the World Trade Center as a future target. In his first speech before a joint session of Congress in 1996 he alerted the world to the danger of an Islamic Republic, steered by fundamentalists and equipped with weapons of mass murder. Today, Netanyahu must convince Obama that the latter does not happen on his watch – or on anyone's watch, for that matter.
President Grover Cleveland, who was the only US president to return to office after losing a presidential election, once retorted: "What is the use of being elected or re-elected unless you stand for something?" Netanyahu will confront the issues of our day because, if for no other reason, you can never make a third first impression.
