Word: likud
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...years of forced exile in Siberia. "In my home, we spoke only about Israel," Lieberman says. "It was a dream that one day we would come here." Upon arriving, Lieberman enrolled at Hebrew University, moonlighting as a bouncer at a student nightclub and becoming active in the right-wing Likud Party. In the late '80s, he and his wife moved to Nokdim, a rugged West Bank settlement overlooking the Judaean desert, where he still lives. (Each night, he is driven home in an armored car, since portions of his commute pass by Palestinian villages...
Around the time he settled in Nokdim, Lieberman met Netanyahu, then a rising Likud star. He ran Netanyahu's first, successful campaign for Prime Minister, in 1996, and became his chief of staff. "Netanyahu trusted him," says Tzahi Hanegbi, who served as the Justice Minister at the time. "He was quiet, discreet and loyal." In 1999, Lieberman split from Netanyahu and Likud, forming Yisrael Beitenu, an unapologetically nationalist party that drew its support from Israel's Russian-immigrant community. The party's most explosive position is the call for all citizens to pledge allegiance to the Jewish state...
...hours after the speech, the right called Netanyahu's acceptance of a two-state solution a sign of Bibi's Obama-ization. "It was a brilliant speech, but Netanyahu surrendered to American pressure. We will act with all our power against a Palestinian state," said Dany Danon, a Likud party leader. The hard-line Prime Minister didn't seem eager to deny his common ground with Obama. "I share the President of the U.S.A.'s desire to bring about a new era of reconciliation in our region," Netanyahu said...
...point out that the Prime Minister chose to ally with the far-right when he might have chosen the centrist Kadima party, which has enough seats to shore up a government committed to a two-state solution. Netanyahu's problem is not simply his partners, but also his own Likud party. Former Likud leader Ariel Sharon was forced to quit the party - in the face of a challenge led by Netanyahu - when he pulled Israel out of Gaza. Likud's party platform specifically opposes the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Rather than a prisoner...
...United States, his government is clearly in a state of distress. Pressure from the Obama Administration to freeze Israeli settlement construction and move toward a two-state peace with the Palestinians has reportedly spurred Minister-without-Portfolio Yossi Peled (who belongs to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's own Likud party) to recommended that Israel shop outside the U.S. for aircraft and military hardware, sell sensitive technology to clients disapproved of by Washington, and invite America's rivals to play a greater role in the Middle East. And if that sounds like chutzpah given the continued U.S. direct aid to Israel...