Benjamin Netanyahu Strikes Back
With former-PM Naftali Bennett out, Bibi is poised for the ultimate comeback.
It was July 17, 2019, and then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s supporters were celebrating a tremendous milestone: Netanyahu had officially become the longest-serving PM in Israel’s history.
In those halcyon days, everything seemed to be going Netanyahu’s way: Israel’s start-up tech companies were quickly becoming the envy of the world; Israel’s tech scene was producing wildly lucrative and successful products like the city-navigation essential, Waze.
For Israeli scientists, the long, arduous journey to becoming the world’s foremost authority on water desalinization was nearly complete.
Under Bibi’s leadership (according to his supporters) or merely on his watch (according to his political opponents) Israel’s Middle Eastern neighbors were finally beginning to thaw. The looming threat of a nuclear Iran, in addition to the rising number of terrorist operations being funded in the region, drove countries like Bahrain, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel.
Egypt and Jordan, the only other two regional powers to have normalized ties with Israel, both did so decades ago. Egypt formally recognized Israel in 1979; Jordan in 1994.