Netanyahu's Second Coming: A Neoconservative Policy Paradigm?

Abstract

U RECENTLY, NEOCONSERVATISM SEEMED REMOTELY related to the Israeli political landscape. Not only it was noted that Israeli politics lack conservative foundation, but also the combination of hawkish foreign policy and free market economy lacked designated constituency. Indeed, in June 1999, several weeks after the Likud and Netanyahu were defeated in the elections, nearly one thousand people gathered in Jerusalem to hear Irving Kristol, the godfather of neoconservatism. Kristol, former advisor of Nixon and Reagan, who argued that neoconservatism has not yet crystallized in Israel, and advised his audience to follow the American example and create the local neoconservative intellectual tradition lacking in Israel. Less then decade later, as this paper would argue, local efforts have combined with changing global and local context to enable neoconservatism to make its mark on the Israeli political discourse and form an agenda based on privatization, liberalization, decimation of the welfare state, and hard-line foreign policy. In the United States, neoconservatism has made an impressive comeback into the public discourse less than decade after its own forefathers wrote its eulogies, and is claimed to underscore the policies of the George W. Bush administration. Recent reports highlight the key positions that neocons hold in the Pentagon and the White House and describe A web of connections [that] binds these people in formidable alliance.' Neoconservative proponents highlight the unanticipated historical accident that allowed neoconservatism to enjoy a second life, at time when its obituaries were still being published.2 Thus, in the wake of September II, the hawkish foreign policy attitudes associated with neoconservatism gained popular ground and combined with the earlier emphasis on liberal economics to form new policy paradigm. While neoconservatism is essentially an American phenomenon, its influence, both political and economic, due to the United States' power position and developments