Only a few weeks into Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s new government, the intense strain of trying to square its members\u2019 zealotry with Israel\u2019s need to improve its international standing is already starkly evident.<\/p>\n
The conundrum was laid out clearly by Tzipi Hotovely, a young political ally of Netanyahu\u2019s recently appointed to oversee the foreign ministry on his behalf.<\/p>\n
She called together the country\u2019s chief diplomats last week to cite rabbinical justifications for taking Palestinian land. Her broader message was that Israeli embassies abroad needed to stop worrying about being \u201csmart\u201d and concentrate instead on being \u201cright\u201d.\u00a0Urging the country\u2019s envoys into a headlong confrontation with the world community, she told them the \u201cbasic truth\u201d was: \u201cAll the land is ours.\u201d<\/p>\n
Netanyahu is too experienced a politician to take Hotovely\u2019s advice fully to heart himself. Having briefly spoken his mind to ensure he won the recent general election, he has now walked back a comment much criticised by the White House that he would never permit a Palestinian state.<\/p>\n
Damage control was also the reason he quickly cancelled defence minister Moshe Yaalon\u2019s plan to create separate buses for Jewish settlers and Palestinian labourers as they return to the occupied territories at the end of a day in Israel.<\/p>\n
Unlike most in his cabinet, Netanyahu understood that, denied by his military of even the flimsiest security pretext, the historical antecedents of bus segregation were too uncomfortable, especially for Israel\u2019s patron, the United States.<\/p>\n
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