Likud Party Indifferent To Netanyahu's Peacemaking
Despite the coming resumption of negotiations, Likud Party leaders expect little from the renewed talks.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement that the diplomatic process would resume was received in the Likud Party with suspicious indifference.
One would expect that the party, which had made a sharp turn to the right in the recent elections, would raise Cain at the thought of the prime minister entering a round of talks whose final target is partitioning the land.
The relative quiet currently enjoyed by Netanyahu in his party is not a sign that Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon has adopted Justice Minister Tzipi Livni’s worldview, or that Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin has found the light at the Peace Now movement encounters. The reason mainly stems from a deep understanding within the Likud that Netanyahu has not crossed the Rubicon regarding the two-state solution and has no intention of leading the way toward the establishment of a Palestinian state on the basis of 1967 borders.
As opposed to former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon or other high-level officials who left the Likud after abandoning the Greater Israel concept, Netanyahu does not show similar signs. At the very beginning of his third term of office, he is not seen in his party as someone about to follow in the footsteps of former prime minister Ehud Olmert and Livni, who turned the two-state vision into their main banner. From Elkin to Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett, the prime minister is perceived as someone who was merely dragged into the diplomatic process.
