Word: netanyahu
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...year-old was chosen to lead the Sayeret Matkal, and began a string of daredevil heroics. The next year, he and Netanyahu were among the special forces who donned maintenance workers' white overalls to storm a Sabena airplane hijacked en route to Tel Aviv airport. Long fascinated by mechanical devices, Barak skillfully picked a lock to open the airplane door. In 1973 he dressed as a woman to infiltrate Beirut with a unit that assassinated three leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He was a commander of Israel's famous 1976 operation to rescue hostages at Uganda's Entebbe airport...
...experience fighting personally tend to calibrate more carefully what it means to be in a permanent state of war." The two soldiers agreed that peace accords, not the continued occupation of Arab land, were ultimately the best safeguard for Israel's security. In contrast to the ultra-vigilant Netanyahu, they shared a confidence in the country's strength. Barak once said Netanyahu saw Israel as a "carp among barracudas" while he saw it as a "benign killer whale...
...months after retiring from the army, in 1995, Barak entered politics as Rabin's Interior Minister. When Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing zealot that November, Shimon Peres, the successor, quickly made Barak Foreign Minister. But the moment Peres lost to Netanyahu in the 1996 election, Barak jumped in to take over as party chief, rankling Labor leaders, who regarded the former general as an upstart...
...Unlike Netanyahu, Barak has said he has no objections to the creation of a Palestinian state. Still, he would impose limitations that are unacceptable to the Palestinians: annexing large chunks of the West Bank containing Jewish settlements; refusing to share Jerusalem. The Palestinians regard him dubiously. Senior officials recall that in the early days of peacemaking, he, unlike a number of other Israeli generals, declined to meet them. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who has met Barak three times, has complained that he is "just a cold fish...
...probably a safe bet that Natan Sharansky, former Soviet dissident and leader of the Russian immigrants in Israel, voted for Netanyahu, the man he credits with helping free him from the Soviet gulag. But he may have cost his buddy the race. The other Soviet Jews, 700,000 of whom have arrived in Israel in the past decade and who now represent 14% of the nation's electorate, swung victory to Barak. Veteran Israelis tend to stick rigidly in either the Labor or Likud camp, but "the Russians," as they are called, can go either way. This time just over...