Benjamin Netanyahu wants to start peace talks — or at least be seen as wanting to. That’s why his right wing allies have come out swinging to stop the talks before they begin.
With Prime Minister Netanyahu just days away from his final deadline to install a new government or lose the option, observers on all sides have their own ways of explaining what’s holding things up. Most of them are correct, but there’s a larger truth that overshadow them all: The Likud hasn’t internalized the fact that it lost the last election, and can’t retain all the goodies in the next coalition that it enjoyed in the last one.
It took more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners to win Gilad Shalit’s freedom. Proposed laws and even a TV show could lower that rate in the future.