Moving to Israel

Now that the dust has settled (somewhat) from the dramatic elections for Israel’s Knesset a couple of weeks ago we start to wonder where we go from here.

As President Shimon Peres has asked Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu to form Israel’s coming government we seem to have a number of schools of thought. One is the “here we go again” thinking focusing on how Netanyahu was our Prime Minister not too long ago and, as things have grown increasingly worse in Israel over the years, the (reasonable) questioning is why this time will be any different.

There is, however, another school of thought. It seems that some people are subscribing to the theory that Netanyahu has learned from past mistakes and that we have therefore witnessed a historic decision that could save the civilized world. These pundits point to the fact that in his first statements as prime minister-presumptive “to the shock of many, he pointedly refused even to mention the Palestinian peace process, which has been going nowhere of late. Nor was there, again clearly deliberately, any reference made to the so-called two-state solution, which those negotiations had been aiming to find.” This quote comes from an article in the U.S. paper Investor’s Business Daily and echoes the sentiments of many people.

While it is impossible to know how the situation will play itself out I, for one, hope that the projections in the above article are accurate. We have very dangerous enemies facing Israel and the entire civlized world and a leader who sees this threat and is ready to act on it is one that Israel and the world sorely needs more than ever.

Ari