Dozens of years of character assassination in the Israeli and international press have long since detached the real Benjamin Netanyahu from the person depicted in articles and hit pieces. In this vein, we can currently see the virulent criticism hurled at Netanyahu from left-wing newspapers and leftist organizations, in Israel and across, over his declarations of intent to build new neighborhoods in the outskirts of Jerusalem – steps he avoided taking for years.
Anyone who knows anything about the soaring housing prices in Jerusalem, the congestion in the city and the shortage of land surpluses in the area, understands how imperative it is for the city to have new neighborhoods. Anyone who has learned even a little about the Israeli-Palestinian issue knows it won't be the neighborhoods in Har Hatayasim, Har Homa and E-1 to get in the way of peace or a Palestinian state. If the Palestinians would have wanted a state they could have had one a long time ago, evidenced by their outright rejection of the state Donald Trump is proposing without even examining it.
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Hence, neither Netanyahu nor the neighborhoods he wants to build are actual obstacles to peace. In fact, upon deeper reflection, Netanyahu appears to be the only regional leader willing to assume significant political and personal risks for the sake of peace. Because neither Mahmoud Abbas, King Abdullah of Jordan, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, or Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi are willing to stand before their respective peoples and tell them, "Peace with Israel is necessary and we have to pay a price for it."
In contrast, the person who did exactly this on Tuesday, less than a week before another dramatic election, was Benjamin Netanyahu. It was in a speech before an extremely right-wing crowd this week, comprising the most strident settlers in the country – who oppose conceding even an inch of Judea and Samaria and reject a Palestinian state of any sort with every fiber of their being – that Netanyahu chose to reiterate messages that don't help him politically.
To the chagrin of many in the crowd, he extolled the virtues of the Trump plan and explained that the Palestinian Authority would be called a state. At times he even admonished the audience members, some of whom took him to task.
Were he a populist merely scrounging for votes ahead of elections, Netanyahu would have avoided all of this. He could have easily promised them that a Palestinian state will never exist and that we will control the territory forever, which is what the crowd would have wanted to hear. Instead, even at this sensitive juncture, existential from his perspective, Netanyahu affirmed his truth – peace is both necessary and costly.
But it doesn't stop here. Netanyahu championed the Trump administration's peace plan, even as terrorists from Gaza fired dozens of rockets at Israel. "War is the last option. I'm not rushing to go there. I know the price our soldiers and the families of the fallen have to pay. This is the last option, but if there's no choice, that's where we'll go," Netanyahu said Monday afternoon, at the height of a rocket attack on Israel's south.
Can anyone point to a more conciliatory and moderate approach? Even the leaders of Blue and White, Netanyahu's rivals from the left, are already flanking him from the right, saying Hamas should be hit now with all our might.
Any other leader in the world would have scorched the earth in Gaza a long time ago. But Netanyahu is again showing restraint, and again is paying the political price – residents of Sderot protested the government's feebleness again on Tuesday.
Thus, a fair description of reality should depict Netanyahu as a leader who wants peace and is willing to pay a political and personal price even as his own fate hangs in the balance. Such is the crux of the matter, and in less than a week we will see whether the Israeli public recognizes this as well.
