Benjamin Netanyahu’s Calculated Ambiguity toward the Two-State Solution

Abstract

LEADERS OFTEN MAKE TACTICAL ADJUSTMENTS to their policies for political expediency, rather than change their underlying assumptions. Save for the most ideologically rigid decision makers, adapting to new realities and responding to political pressures—even if only at the rhetorical level that falls short of a real shift in policy—is a natural part of political life. On rare occasions, decision makers will reassess their goals and change their fundamental beliefs on a core issue. Mikhail Gorbachev is a paradigmatic example of a leader who underwent political “learning” when he concluded that the Soviet Union needed to effect dramatic changes in its domestic economy as well as its foreign policy. Over time, influenced by “New Thinkers”—a group of young Soviet intellectuals with whom he consulted regularly—Gorbachev learned from Soviet failures, as he came to embrace a fundamentally different worldview than the one with which he began upon assuming his position as general secretary of the Communist Party.1 More often than not, however, decision makers are, like most people, consistency seekers.2 They may make adjustments to their positions when they determine that the need arises—for example, when pressed to do so by internal and/or external actors—but will otherwise cling to their long-held beliefs.