Netanyahu’s diplomacy: success or failure?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is irreplaceable. That is the main, and to a large extent, the only message conveyed by the Likud party and Netanyahu at its head. He, the supposedly experienced leader, is the best-known person in Israel. He meets with world leaders and counts some as friends; he maneuvers between East and West, thereby guaranteeing Israel’s interests. He is also shaping the new Middle East of which the late President Shimon Peres dreamed — without paying the price of territorial concessions in the West Bank and on the Golan Heights that his predecessors were willing to pay. The implicit message is that if he is indicted on charges of bribery and breach of trust, and even if the lengthy legal proceedings against him get underway, Netanyahu is still preferable to all those presuming to replace him.

However, ahead of the April 9 elections, Netanyahu actually appears to be struggling as he seeks to preserve this image. One of his primary stated goals in recent years is an Iranian withdrawal from Syria — not an Iranian troop reduction and not a pullback from areas along Israel’s borders, but a total departure. It is unclear whether he thought he could achieve his goal with the help of his so-called friend, Russian President Vladimir Putin, or of American pressure. In December 2018, he reportedly rejected a deal that was supposed to result in an American and Iranian troop withdrawal from Syria as a package deal. If the reports are true, his motive is hard to understand. In any case, he failed to avert the announcement by President Donald Trump of a US pullout from Syria, he has been unable to get the Iranians out of there, either, and he has failed to scuttle Russia’s transfer to the Syrian army of anti-aircraft S-300 rockets, which are of great concern to Israel. In light of these severe failures, Netanyahu is having to make do with pathetic leaks about Israeli bombings in Syria, much to the chagrin of Israel’s security agencies that prefer ambiguity about such operations.