Who is Benjamin Netanyahu?
By Al Pessin (VOA-Jerusalem) He will soon be known as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but everyone in Israel will continue to call him by his popular nickname “Bibi.” He will be the youngest prime minister in Israel’s history, at age 46. His meteoric rise in Israeli politics began just eight years ago, when he was first elected to the parliament. He was deputy foreign minister during the Gulf War and became familiar to millions of people around the world as Israel’s main spokesman on foreign television networks during that period — sometimes appearing with a gas mask on during Iraqi missile attacks on Tel Aviv. Netanyahu was also a member of Israel’s delegation to the 1991 Madrid peace conference, which started the Middle East peace…
By Al Pessin (VOA-Jerusalem) He will soon be known as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but everyone in Israel will continue to call him by his popular nickname “Bibi.” He will be the youngest prime minister in Israel’s history, at age 46. His meteoric rise in Israeli politics began just eight years ago, when he was first elected to the parliament. He was deputy foreign minister during the Gulf War and became familiar to millions of people around the world as Israel’s main spokesman on foreign television networks during that period — sometimes appearing with a gas mask on during Iraqi missile attacks on Tel Aviv. Netanyahu was also a member of Israel’s delegation to the 1991 Madrid peace conference, which started the Middle East peace process. That experience appears to have been crucial in forming his ideas on how to negotiate with Arabs. Netanyahu is the leader of the political movement representing, according to the election results, the slightly more than one-half of Isra
