The Virtual and the Real Likud

The narrow election victory of Bibi Netanyahu in 1996 was unexpected and dismayed a wide coalition stretching from the refugee camps of Gaza to the White House. Despite Peres's unconvincing attempt to act as if he was Rabin's natural successor, a series of suicide bombings convinced the Israeli public that the Oslo process had brought neither peace nor security. The peace process, it was reasoned, needed to be slowed down, but not extinguished.

Netanyahu's victory by default did little to earn him the public's trust. He was instead dubbed ‘the magician’ because of the unexpected result. Israeli journalists showed little love for Netanyahu. In one sense, they projected the election as almost a referendum on the Rabin assassination in the expectation that Peres's victory would have been ‘a minimal moral compensation’ for the killing of the Prime Minister.

There was also a deep resentment within the Likud within weeks of winning power. Netanyahu initially attempted tomarginalize his colleagues in the Likud by not consulting them either during coalition negotiations or in appointing government ministers.

Moreover, Netanyahu desperately wished to keep Sharon at arm’s length and to keep him out of the inner cabinet. Indeed, he was unable to present his government because of the dispute over a portfolio for Sharon. On a personal level, there was no love lost between the two. In the past, Sharon had ridiculed Netanyahu, referring to his public explanation of extra-marital affairs, when he commented that ‘there are leaders who solve problems and others who get caught with their pants down’. Netanyahu, in frustration, spoke of Sharon’s incessant and tireless subversion. When the pressure from the Right proved too great, he simply expanded the cabinet and created the Ministry of National Infrastructure for Sharon.