Ben Shapiro

He’s baaack. Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has retaken the Likud Party leadership. Netanyahu, elected Prime Minister in 1996, lost his 1999 re-election campaign; he then dropped out of politics for several years before becoming Foreign Minister and Finance Minister under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, before Sharon’s creation of his own political party.

Netanyahu has historically been a center-right politician—which is to say, he has given up less land than both his predecessors and successors. He is not, however, an ideological opponent of handing away land to terrorists. He opposes such capitulation when it is politically advantageous to do so—he resigned from the Likud leadership in 2005 when Ariel Sharon rammed through unilateral surrender of the Gaza Strip, thereby gaining credibility within the Likud Party. He accepts capitulation when he believes it is politically advantageous to do so—he signed over 13 percent of Judea and Samaria in the un-implemented Wye River Accords in 1998.

Netanyahu’s greatest strength is his unwavering commitment to free market principles. Founded by socialists, Israel has its share of committed socialists as well as socialists by habit; it also has its share of parties, religious and non-religious, who enjoy living off the public dime. Netanyahu is a revolutionary politician with regard to economics—he has consistently championed free enterprise.

Netanyahu’s commitment to economic freedom should be applauded, but his commitment to security remains questionable. Netanyahu now finds himself in the uncomfortable position formerly occupied by Ariel Sharon: the bulwark against internal rightward pressure.

That rightward pressure is embodied in Moshe Feiglin, former leader of Zo Artzeinu and ardent opponent of any land-for-peace blackmail by the Palestinian Arabs. Feiglin led his supporters into the Likud Party several years ago in an attempt to take over Likud-–what commentator Hillel Halkin (a titular rightist but actual leftist on Israel) termed a “hostile takeover.” Feiglin’s “hostile takeover” would actually restore Likud to its charter, which opposes the creation of any Palestinian state. His detractors label him a religious extremist–he has the temerity to invoke the Bible while discussing security policy–but Feiglin’s success within the Likud demonstrates the growing recognition within Likud that the strategy of Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu has largely been Labor-lite.

And so Netanyahu has campaigned against Feiglin the same way Sharon did, by labeling Feiglin an opponent of Likud ideals, an outsider to be scorned. Sharon’s opposition to Feiglin led him to exit Likud altogether; Netanyahu’s opposition to Feiglin may lead him to attempt a party purge in order to cater to centrist Israelis.

This would be the Israeli equivalent of Rudy Giuliani attempting to oust the religious right component of the Republican Party base. Likud would become a perpetual minority party, particularly since current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of the Sharon-created Kadima Party parrots the center-right position occupied by Netanyahu, albeit in slightly more liberal fashion. While Olmert, the architect of the disastrous Israeli incursion into Lebanon, remains insanely unpopular-–his approval ratings clock in at an unheard-of eight percent-–Netanyahu may fare no better once in office. He will then be splitting the Israeli centrist vote with Kadima; Labor would monopolize the left, while the right, ousted by Likud, would splinter between a bevy of religious parties.

More dangerously, if Netanyahu’s prospective purge is successful, Netanyahu will have even less reason to abandon the failed Israeli security policy of slow suicide. Establishment Israeli politicians embrace the strange notion that hewing to the center – bleeding Israel dry through concessions, while simultaneously, hollowly insisting that the Palestinian Arabs keep their side of the bargain-–will lead to continued electoral power. It’s a mistake (no Israeli prime minister has served a full term since Yitzchak Shamir, 1986-1992), and it’s a mistake that leads to dead Israelis.

Ben Shapiro is a third-year student at Harvard Law School. He is the author of Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth. This article appeared on the site of the Family Security Foundation on August 16.