Benjamin Netanyahu

On a rainy night last week, a ragtag group of right-wing demonstrators gathered outside Jerusalem's Laromme Hotel, which stands like a huge white fortress at the intersection of two major roads--to Palestinian-controlled Bethlehem and Hebron--into the Holy City. The demonstrators were there to greet U.S. Special Envoy Dennis B. Ross, who had come to put pressure on the Netanyahu government to move forward with Israel's redeployment from the West Bank. "Ross Go Home" read one of their signs.

JERUSALEM — The surprise unity government announced Tuesday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has many observers predicting that the reformed coalition will embark on a more moderate path, including reopening talks with Palestinians and softening rhetoric on attacking Iran. The addition of the centrist Kadima party to what has been called one of Israel's most right-wing coalition governments gives Netanyahu a comfortable 78% majority in the parliament, lessening the clout of small right-wing parties and factions.

Benjamin Netanyahu has produced a compelling book that reaffirms my own conclusion that in modern terrorism, we are not dealing with some transient and easily solved problem that can be banished by one quick and bold stroke.

Israel's move toward early elections is the latest sign that its threatened attack against Iran's nuclear facilities is unlikely to take place in the coming months. Though no final decision has been made about moving up national elections slated for next year, the Knesset, or parliament, is talking about dissolving this month and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to announce as soon as next week an election date in September. Some officials predict the chances of an Israeli airstrike against Iran will decrease because a divisive political campaign would paralyze the government and focus attention on domestic issues.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, moving to fill a key post in his new government, met Friday with longtime rival Benjamin Netanyahu and reportedly offered him the job of foreign minister. The prime minister summoned Netanyahu to his sheep ranch in the Negev desert for several hours of talks that ended as the Jewish Sabbath was beginning. The two men were to meet again Sunday, when the Israeli workweek commences. Israeli media said Netanyahu had asked for time to think about Sharon's offer.

Bibi is back. Unlikely as it seemed after his resounding electoral defeat in 1999, Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Israel's right-wing Likud Party, has returned triumphantly from the political wilderness and was inaugurated -- for the second time -- as prime minister on Tuesday. He's nearly 60 now, more jowly and generally droopier than during his first term, and the problems he faces are, if anything, more complex.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's former ambassador to the United Nations and its voice on American television during the Gulf War, emerged Monday as the front-runner to take over the leadership of the Likud Party, which was defeated in parliamentary elections last summer.

Look who's back. Ehud Barak, the former prime minister who was routed from office six years ago, is making a bid to take over Israel's Labor Party once again. After fading from public life to dabble in business, Barak has hit the comeback trail, convinced he can come to Israel's rescue. He faces stiff competition in Monday's party primary.

One night in mid-January, Benjamin Netanyahu made an unexpected appearance on prime-time Israeli news. Netanyahu, the glib former Israeli ambassador to the U.N., was running for the leadership of the Likud, the country's largest right-wing party. On the air, he admitted he had cheated on his wife, and alleged that political rivals had tried to blackmail him to quit the race by threatening to publicize intimate photos. In the days that followed, Netanyahu's comments in the media were shrill.

Israel's Labor Party voted Tuesday to join the incoming government of Benjamin Netanyahu, lending a moderate voice to a coalition dominated by hard-liners and easing concerns of a head-on confrontation with Washington over Mideast peacemaking. Chants of "Disgrace! Disgrace!"

JERUSALEM — Historian Ben-Zion Netanyahu, the father of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the man said to have had the most profound influence on the conservative Israeli leader, died early Monday in his Jerusalem home. He was 102. The elder Netanyahu served as the personal secretary of Zionism's prominent Revisionist leader, Zeev Jabotinsky, in the United States during World War II, lobbying for the creation of a Jewish state. He also pursued his academic work, specializing in medieval Spanish Jewry and the roots of the Spanish Inquisition.

JERUSALEM - Israel's government is scrambling to find ways to save some of the unauthorized West Bank settlements it once promised to dismantle, including some that are built partly on private Palestinian land. The new strategy seeks to retroactively legalize some outposts and, in other cases, relocate Jewish settlers to nearby land that is not privately owned, in effect creating what critics say would be the first new West Bank settlements in years. The approach by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition government appears designed to avoid the need to carry out high-profile military evictions of settlers in order to appease conservative lawmakers, who have accused Netanyahu of betraying the settlers' cause.

President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday sought to offer a united front against Iran's growing nuclear program but appeared to differ on whether a diplomatic solution remains possible or if military action is needed to prevent Tehran from gaining a nuclear bomb. At a White House meeting, Netanyahu said he reserved the option to launch a unilateral attack on Iran despite Obama's position that more time is needed for stiff economic sanctions and international diplomacy to work.

President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are publicly emphasizing their united front in the fight against the Iranian nuclear program , but as they head into high-stakes meetings Monday, it isn't at all clear they share the same timetable for how to proceed. Obama previewed his message with an appeal for patience, arguing in a Sunday address that the world should give sanctions time to work before launching military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.

  At a previous high-profile summit between a U.S. president and an Israeli prime minister, an exasperated Bill Clinton marveled at what he viewed as his counterpart's arrogance in schooling him about the Mideast conflict. According to one aide, Clinton asked after the meeting: Just who is the superpower? The Israeli leader at the time was - and again is - Benjamin Netanyahu. At home, Netanyahu is seen as politically cautious, risk-averse and "squeezable" when it comes to his positions.

Israel's current coalition government is one of its most stable in decades, and the next scheduled national poll is nearly two years off. Yet election fever has gripped the country and some believe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is quietly preparing to call for an early vote, perhaps in the middle of this year. The two biggest political parties - Netanyahu's conservative Likud and its main rival, the centrist Kadima - recently announced that they would hold primaries to select leaders whose names would be on the next election ballot.

Palestinian and Israeli leaders have agreed to meet with President Obama on Tuesday in New York, a three-way encounter the administration has been trying for weeks to broker, the White House announced Saturday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will meet Obama on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement. Each will also meet one-on-one with Obama.

Benjamin Netanyahu, taking office as Israeli prime minister amid heckling by leftist and Arab lawmakers, offered Tuesday to seek a "permanent arrangement" for limited Palestinian self-rule. "We do not wish to rule another people," the conservative leader declared in a speech to the Knesset, Israel's parliament.

For months many Israelis shrugged off the mosque burnings, the uprooted Palestinian olive trees and even the death threats against Jewish leftists. But when young settlers this month vandalized army bases and stoned Israeli soldiers, the question of Jewish terrorism turned into a national emergency. The recent flare-up in settler violence has puzzled many because it comes when there are no peace talks that might lead to land concessions, Palestinian attacks in the West Bank have dropped to new lows, and Israel is led by a conservative government that is expanding settlement construction.

After a successful Palestinian bid to join the U.N. cultural agency, UNESCO, Israel said Tuesday that it would retaliate by issuing tenders for about 2,000 new housing units on land it seized during the 1967 Mideast War. After meeting with his top advisors, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would order construction of apartments in the Jerusalem area and the West Bank settlements of Gush Etzion and Maaleh Adumim. Officials said about 1,650 units would be built around Jerusalem and the rest in the West Bank.