Netanyahu Quits Parliament and Political Life

Ten days after Israelis handed him a crushing defeat at the polls, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday announced his resignation from parliament and active political life but promised a comeback.

Israel’s youngest prime minister and one of its more controversial, Netanyahu made the announcement during an emotional farewell to activists of his Likud Party, which is itself struggling to come to terms with the devastating May 17 loss.

Netanyahu resigned as leader of the party on election night, immediately after the scope of his defeat by Labor Party leader Ehud Barak became clear. Ariel Sharon, the hawkish outgoing foreign minister, was voted temporary chairman of Likud until primaries are held later this year.

Eyes glistening, Netanyahu told several hundred Likud members at the gathering in Tel Aviv that he was quitting the parliament, “but in no way will I resign from the struggle for the future of Israel. I will continue to devote myself to the country and to that national idea in my own way,” he said without elaborating.

He was interrupted by shouted appeals from his supporters to “stay!”

“God willing, we will make a comeback,” he said.

Netanyahu will remain in office until Barak puts together his coalition government, a process that could take until early July. Negotiations on forming the government are underway between Labor Party representatives and the 14 other factions, including Likud, that won seats in the 120-member parliament.

Then, Netanyahu’s aides say, he plans to write a book about his tumultuous three-year term and go on the lecture circuit in the United States, where he is likely to earn top fees from public policy forums, universities and Jewish organizations.

Once the most ubiquitous of prime ministers, popping up on Israeli radio call-in shows and television discussions seemingly every day, Netanyahu has all but disappeared from public view since his defeat. He made no public appearance until Wednesday, when he greeted 100 newly arrived refugees from the war-torn Serbian province of Kosovo at Ben Gurion International Airport.

After he was accused by the Israeli media of no longer doing his job, Netanyahu convened a meeting of his security advisors Wednesday and set a Cabinet meeting, probably his last, for Sunday.

David Bar-Illan, a senior aide, said the accusations were unfair. “Had he convened the government and passed all sorts of decisions obligating his successor, he would have been severely and properly criticized,” Bar-Illan said.

Netanyahu leaves a decidedly mixed legacy. He shattered the barrier that had existed in Israel over the Mideast peace process, becoming the first Likud leader to join the left in ceding parts of the West Bank to the Palestinians. Many Jews regard the land as a biblical birthright.

In so doing, Netanyahu helped create a new consensus on the Oslo peace process, with many more Israelis endorsing the negotiations at the end of his tenure than at the beginning. He brought what Israelis call “the other half”--the right wing--of the nation into the process pioneered by the Labor Party governments of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.

But it is not clear that such a result was his intent. Each time he took difficult steps for peace, Netanyahu acted to slow or negate them, perhaps to show right-wing supporters that his direction had not changed, or not significantly.

Netanyahu said Thursday that one of his greatest achievements was in establishing the principle of “reciprocity” with the Palestinians and lowering expectations, fueled by Labor, that the peace process would result in a sovereign Palestinian state on most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Netanyahu did not rule out a Palestinian “entity” but said the Palestinians could not be allowed rights that might threaten Israel.

Many Israelis credit him for a sharp drop in Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians during his tenure, saying his tough posture on peace and security was responsible. Others applaud an economic policy that moved toward balanced budgets, lower inflation and privatization, even though for ordinary Israelis the actions resulted in rising unemployment and stagnant growth.

But his term as Israel’s leader was also characterized by a general stagnation in the peace process, diplomatic isolation from allies, including the United States, and deepening rifts in Israeli society, which many Israelis accused Netanyahu of deliberately fostering in his effort to stay in power.

“He aggravated the divides between right and left,” said Avi Ben-Abraham, a physician and unsuccessful Likud parliamentary candidate, outside Thursday’s meeting. “But he did a great service to the country in ‘koshering’ the Oslo agreements among the ranks of the right. That is his greatest legacy.”

Netanyahu, a telegenic, articulate candidate, will also go down in history as the man who “Americanized” Israeli politics, running U.S.-style campaigns and continuing to make unparalleled use of the media, particularly television, throughout his tenure.

Ironically, many Israelis said Netanyahu’s finest moment in government may have been his swift, graceful exit, when he conceded that he had lost to Barak in an unusually gracious speech less than 30 minutes after the polls closed.

“In this country, nobody does that; everybody tries to hang on to power,” said Daniel Elazar, director of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a public policy think tank. “He may have set a new standard.”

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Times researcher Batsheva Sobelman in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.