Bibi moves up

The Guardian has the story of the ascension of Binyamin 'Bibi' Netanyahu toward the prime ministership of Israel, now that Ehud Olmert has been deposed: "Netanyahu's hardline views on the Palestinians have barely changed since he first entered public life in the early 1980s. In 1996, when he became the country's youngest prime minister (and the first who was born after the state was created in 1948), he vowed to chip away at the Oslo accords, which were agreed between Yizthak Rabin and Yasser Arafat and broke Israel's historic taboo on dealing with the PLO. It was Rabin's murder by a Jewish extremist, the fatal indecision of the Labour veteran Shimon Peres, and a devastating series of Hamas and Islamic Jihad suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that swept the Likud to power. Few of those who dealt with Netanyahu the prime minister have warm memories of him. "Who the fuck does he think he is, who's the fucking superpower here?" an outraged Bill Clinton asked his aides after his first meeting with the new Israeli leader. A former diplomat remembers him as being 'bumptious and over-confident' when he snubbed Robin Cook, Britain's foreign secretary, after a high-profile visit to the site of a Jewish settlement being planned in Arab East Jerusalem. In 1997 Netanyahu did reluctantly agree to withdraw from the West Bank city of Hebron (though an enclave of fanatical Jewish settlers remain there, over a decade later)."

Rico says Netanyahu will certainly raise the temperature in the Middle East if he comes to power again...