[נויורק טיימס]

Lecture Trail In the U.S. Is Attracting Netanyahu
By JOEL GREENBERG
Published: Wednesday, May 26, 1999
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LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkWithdrawing from active politics after his electoral defeat, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will give up his seat in Parliament and most likely write a book and go on the lecture circuit in the United States, his spokesman said today.

The spokesman, David Bar-Illan, said Mr. Netanyahu was planning to announce his resignation from Parliament on Thursday at a meeting of his Likud Party. Mr. Netanyahu stepped down as head of the Likud last week when he conceded defeat to Ehud Barak, the Labor Party leader.

''He's not going to be an active member of the party or in Parliament,'' Mr. Bar-Illan said. ''He has a book contract, and he has very attractive offers for lectures. So I suspect that would be the route he will take.''

Since conceding defeat barely half an hour after the polls closed on May 17, Mr. Netanyahu, 49, has said nothing in public and largely disappeared from public view.

A photograph issued by the Government Press Office showed him smiling and relaxed with his family at a staff farewell party in his official house, and a newspaper picture today showed him waving as he went house hunting here with his wife, Sara. Mr. Netanyahu is to remain in office until Mr. Barak forms a Government.

Mr. Bar-Illan said Mr. Netanyahu had bounced back in the week since his loss. ''He's very buoyant, very up,'' Mr. Bar-Illan said. ''He's internalized the defeat, and he's looking forward.''

As Mr. Barak has begun talks on forming a Government, Mr. Netanyahu has cut back his work hours, canceling a Cabinet meeting on Sunday and an earlier gathering of aides to discuss security issues. Although those meetings will resume, they will not produce significant decisions, in deference to Mr. Barak's incoming administration, said another spokesman for Mr. Netanyahu, Aviv Bushinsky.

''Activity has gone down to a minimum,'' Mr. Bushinsky said in a radio interview. ''I think the Prime Minister and the ministers are acting responsibly by avoiding decisions that will bind the incoming government.''

Mr. Barak's One Israel bloc, which includes Labor and two allied parties, held its second day of exploratory talks with other parties on forming a coalition. Mr. Barak is said to be seeking as broad a coalition as possible to insure stability, including the Likud as well as Shas, an ultra-Orthodox party of Sephardic Jews, families from North African and Middle Eastern countries, that has grown to become the third largest in Parliament.

Mr. Barak's voters have flooded his office with faxes and E-mail that demand that Shas be kept out of the coalition. The Shas leader, Aryeh Deri, has been sentenced to jail after having been convicted of bribery, and the party's campaign was peppered with sharp attacks on the justice system. Mr. Deri remains free while he appeals his conviction to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Barak has refused to rule out Shas, provided that Mr. Deri resigns -- a demand that Shas negotiators resisted today. Likud members said Mr. Barak's team had told them that they would be senior partners in Government if they joined his coalition.

Shlomo Ben-Ami, a Labor lawmaker who is on the One Israel negotiating team, said by working for a broad coalition Mr. Barak was trying to avoid the mistakes of his predecessors.

''We've learned a lesson from the last seven years,'' Mr. Ben-Ami told Israel Radio. ''During the four years of the Rabin Government, dramatic, important moves were made in the peace process and economic growth. But in the end they were perceived as rule by half of the people over the other half, and the moves were cut short.''

''Then,'' Mr. Ben-Ami added, ''there was a Government in which the other half ruled, and the result was a serious culture war, deep division and stalling of the peace process. The lesson is to try and heal these rifts, to build as wide a coalition as possible. But not one that is paralyzing. One that creates a consensus for solution of both internal and external problems.''


Lecture Trail In the U.S. Is Attracting Netanyahu