Where Benjamin Netanyahu appears
196 total
…ad the operational support of the military and intelligence professionals, the decision in effect rested with Bibi and me. The fact we were ready to go ahead in those circumstances was not unprecedented. When Menachem Begin ordered the bomb...
…before taking action,” I said. “But here’s the difference. When they look up, they see Netanyahu, or me. When Bibi and I look up, we see heaven. Whoever is up there, we clearly can’t go to them for advice. We are responsible for Israel’s se...
…before taking action,” I said. “But here’s the difference. When they look up, they see Netanyahu, or me. When Bibi and I look up, we see heaven. Whoever is up there,
ty of Israel, I knew from our previous meetings that he was none of these things. Yet I did, in a deliberately non-didactic way, raise the issue of our different perspectives on the Iranians’ getting nuclear arms. “You see it in the context...
…tentially a nuclear Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. I was not about to lecture President Obama on this. While Bibi liked to portray him variously as weak, naïve or tone-deaf to interests and security of Israel, I knew from our previous meet...
was giving Bibi political cover for abandoning any serious effort to get a peace agreement. Their argument was entirely reasonable. My frustration was that, due to the need for military secrecy, the counter-argument was impossible for me to...
…with the Palestinians were stuck in neutral, I was under increasing pressure from within Labor to pull out of Bibi’s government. What on earth was the point of staying, they asked. All I was doing, from their perspective, was giving Bibi po...
…ister of Strategic Affairs. But the confidence and detail with which the plan was laid out, and the fact that Bibi, Lieberman and I were in favor of being prepared to act, gave me the sense that a majority would back military action if it b...
…ister of Strategic Affairs. But the confidence and detail with which the plan was laid out, and the fact that Bibi,
…decisions in Israel, two ministers always mattered the most: the Prime Minister and Defense Minister. Neither Bibi nor I doubted we had to ready to strike if that proved necessary. Nor did Foreign Minister Lieberman. Even for us, it was an...
… In the early months, my priority was to ensure we at least had a military option. A full year before joining Bibi’s government, as Defense Minister under Olmert, I’d first tried to put an operational plan in place, only to find that the la...
…urity cooperation on things like the anti-missile weapons and, crucially, the challenge which had led me into Bibi’s government in the first place: keeping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. * * * It was a race against time. The Iranians w...
…li consulate. We spoke in detail about the state of the negotiations. With Molcho still in the room, I phoned Bibi in Jerusalem on the secure phone line. I said I’d just been updated on the talks, and it seemed clear there were a number of...
…h there was a formal restarting of the talks, they went almost nowhere during the period of the freeze, which Bibi cited as a reason for not extending it further. From then on, the negotiations produced even less. I didn’t buy the narrative...
…ere aware I favored agreeing to a settlement freeze, they clearly found it a lot easier to talk to me than to Bibi. On one visit, to my regret and Bibi’s evident frustration once I’d got home, the press highlighted this dramatic difference...
… own Labor party and almost everyone else on the left. I disagreed. I knew how deep, genuine and longstanding Bibi’s resistance to Palestinian statehood was. But I had another, serious concern about the “peace plan” he announced: an entirel...
…nd then to the public, as soon as he got back from his talks with the President. In my repeated meetings with Bibi in the weeks that followed – both one-onone, and within the informal group of close ministers and aides known as the Group of...
an state. He was explicit about what Israel needed to do. In an Oval Office meeting with Bibi in May 2009, and in a speech in Cairo the next month, he called for a total halt to settlement construction on the West Bank. US opposition to set...
…lity to attack the Iranian facilities anyway. We still lacked that capacity when I became Defense Minister in Bibi’s government in May 2009. But the main reason I’d stayed in the job, and my main 409 / BARAK / 124 focus from the day Bibi’s...
political process than a contest between rival stalls in a Middle Eastern bazaar. Bibi was holding parallel talks with the Orthodox parties critical to assembling a parliamentary majority. He was matching and raising every assurance of a mi...
