He’s now the longest serving prime minister in the history of Israel, has survived eight years of President Barack Obama in the White House, as well as many attempts by his political opponents and a hostile Israeli press to topple him.
He also guided Israel safely through five years of unprecedented turmoil in the Middle East and even succeeded to team up with former foes in the Arab world against an ever more aggressive Iran that has succeeded to become a regional superpower in recent years.
At the age of 67, Benyamin Netanyahu has become the grand old man of Israeli politics. But he has no plans to retire.
The Israeli prime minister is eagerly looking forward to work with President-elect Donald Trump, who he says he knows well after only two meetings, and explained to CBS’ 60 Minutes why he is so optimistic about the future of his country.
“Part of his optimism relates to the election in the U.S. He and his followers on the Israeli right, are greeting the idea of President Donald Trump with a resounding l’chaim (on life or cheers),” said CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl in her introduction to the interview.
Stahl is right. The election of Trump has raised high hopes for a totally different relationship between the White House and the Israeli government and for a completely different U.S. policy toward the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
“I know Donald Trump. I know him very well. And I think his attitude, his support for Israel is clear. He feels very warmly about the Jewish state, about the Jewish people and about Jewish people. There’s no question about that,” Netanyahu said at the outset of the interview.
Netanyahu told Stahl that he doesn’t regret going to Congress last year to campaign against the Iran deal and said it was his responsibility to stand up against Obama and speak out against the nuclear deal with Iran because it threatens the future of Israel.
Netanyahu said he has quite a few options to get rid of the nuclear deal with the Mullahs now that Trump will occupy the White House.
“There are ways, various ways of undoing it (the nuclear deal). I have about five things in my mind,” the Israeli leader said, but he refused elaborate.
Netanyahu told 60 Minutes that the only good thing the deal has done to Israel is to bring ”the Arab countries and Israel closer together.”
“All I can tell you is that Israel’s position in the Arab world has changed because they no longer see Israel as their enemy, but as their ally, in their indispensable battle against the forces of militant Islam,” Netanyahu said.
He confirmed that Israel’s relations with Egypt and Jordan have dramatically improved and that Israel has formed an alliance with Saudi Arabia against the Iranian threat.
Netanyahu vehemently denied that his good relations with Russia President Vladimir Putin have put Israel in the anti-U.S. bloc led by China and Russia, as Stahl suggested.
“That’s a false impression. First of all, there is, there is an irreplaceable ally. It’s called the United States of America,” the prime minister said, adding that the U.S. too has all sorts of relations with the two countries.
He said he developed good relations with Putin to avoid a clash between the IDF and the Russian army in Syria, where Israel frequently attacks Hezbollah-bound weapon convoys.
Stahl then tried to blame Netanyahu for the stalemate in the negotiations with the Palestinian Arabs and claimed they suffer under an occupation that has lasted 50 years, and the expansion of so-called Israeli settlements, the Jewish villages in Judea and Samaria, was the main stumbling block on the road to peace.
Netanyahu remained unfazed, however, and said the claim that Israel has become isolated as a result of its “occupation” of the Palestinian Arabs was false.
“Isolated? All these countries are coming to Israel and it’s a fantastic change,” Netanyahu said in reference to the many countries who turn to Israel for help in areas such as agriculture or water technology.
He denied the “settlements” were an obstacle to peace, not only because they make up less than three percent of the land mass of Judea and Samaria, but because the obsession with them obscures the real reason for the absence of peace — the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish State.
“The real reason we haven’t had peace is because of a persistent refusal of the Palestinians to recognize a Jewish state in any border,” Netanyahu said.
“You (the Palestinian Arabs) ask us to recognize you, I’m willing to do that. I ask you to recognize us. Recognize the Jewish state, for God’s sake. And if they do, this thing will begin to correct itself very quickly,” he said.
Netanyahu said he hasn’t reversed his position on the solution of the conflict — two states for two peoples — and repeated his desire to work with Trump in order to solve the 100-year-old conflict that Trump has dubbed “the war that never ends.” (For more from the author of “Netanyahu Says He and Trump Can Solve Palestinian Conflict, Get Rid of Iran Nuclear Deal” please click HERE)
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