Netanyahu Lowers His Voice

In his postelection comments, Israeli Prime Minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu has conspicuously moderated candidate Netanyahu’s confrontational tone, an encouraging sign that his approach to the peace process and Israel’s deep domestic divisions may be more pragmatic than his campaign oratory suggested. A clearer sense of Netanyahu’s plans will emerge in coming days as he forms his new government. The key ministries to watch are defense and finance, the latter because the power of the purse can be used to fund the expansion of Israeli West Bank settlements. Such funding would be seen by the Palestinians--and by Washington--as evidence that peace talks are no longer taken seriously.

Netanyahu quickly and wisely served notice that only his comments on policy should be taken as official. That preemptively aims at keeping such hard-line supporters as former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon from trying to impose their own rigid views on the new government. Netanyahu is the first Israeli prime minister elected directly. Though his victory margin was only 1%, he outpolled his Likud Party, which will have the second-largest representation in the Knesset, behind Labor. That personal victory could give Netanyahu more freedom of action as he turns to the religious parties and to two new special-interest blocs to build a coalition based on a strong majority of the Knesset.

The heavy and proper emphasis put on the peace process and on Israel’s religious-secular divisions has overshadowed Netanyahu’s advocacy of a more decentralized, free market economy as the necessary road to increased prosperity for a growing population. Israel’s economy has in fact done well of late, and bodes to become stronger still as regional markets open up and foreign investments increase. But both further investments from abroad and wider trade with the surrounding Arab world depend heavily on whether peace with the Palestinians is pursued to completion.

Among the greatest achievements of the bold policies initiated by the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and departing Prime Minister Shimon Peres was to pierce the walls that for so long separated Israel economically from most of its neighbors. It would be a setback of monumental proportions if the Netanyahu government were to act in ways that could only lead to a restoration of that isolation.