This week in Israel, the government's budget got through parliament - but it lost its foreign minister, David Levy, who resigned in protest over the government's social policies and its procrastination over the Middle East peace process. This has left the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, with a tiny majority. His coalition partners are now also threatening to resign over the extent of Israel's next troop redeployment from the West Bank. Lyse Doucet reports from Jerusalem:

It's been another one of those weeks in Israel, a time of brinkmanship, a media cliff hanger. Ever since Binyamin Netanyahu came to power in the spring of 1996, it erupts with astounding regularity, every few months: these tense moments, when all is electrified, and the fate of Israel's government and the Middle East peace process seem to hang in the balance.

It's hard to keep a government and a peace process running in such chronic instability. It's hard enough being a journalist who has to cover it. How many times can you report that something is on the brink of collapse before you simply must decide, lest you lose all credibility: is it dead or alive?

But, journalism, like politics, is about hedging your bets - no one like's to get it wrong. So, there was some relief when 1998 started in, let us say, a more factual way. The spotlight was on Israel's Foreign Minister David Levy, threatening to resign again, this time over the budget and the government's delays in the peace process.

Mr Levy has said it, and never done it, too many times to count. But this time, Mr Levy, whose mouth seems to naturally droop into a frown, walked straight to the podium, faced the television cameras, and said emphatically: I quit. You see, he was also at risk of losing his credibility. There was, at long last, a moment of clarity, at least as far as Mr Levy was concerned.

But the moment was fleeting, and Israel and the world that watches it are still stuck with, more or less, the same burning questions to which there are no quick or simple answers: will the departure of a relative moderate from Israel's right wing government deal a fatal blow to a tottering peace process? How long can Mr Netanyahu's fractious coalition survive? And, of course, there's that third question which bedevils observers. What will Mr Netanyahu, or as he's widely known - Bibi - do?

One Israeli columnist tried to ease some of the pressure by saying: "don't even try to answer it." Any attempt, he said, to logically analyse what Mr Netanyahu will do is like Israeli intelligence studying the moves of the Syrian President Hafez al Assad - there simply isn't enough information to probe the inner workings of either. He called Mr Netanyahu Israel's magician.

So, another Israeli journalist went straight to the source. He asked the Prime Minister: "do you like it when they call you a magician?"

"No", he answered, "because I'm not a magician."

The journalist asked: "What are you then, a survivor?"

"No," replied Mr Netanyahu, "I'm not a survivor."

"So, what are you?"

"I achieve what I want to achieve," he said. "I'm a winner."

A winner. Indeed, this is a Prime Minister who loves winning, and a leader who's become very practised, not just at winning one crisis after another, but also at looking like he is going to win the next one.

It's known that Mr Netanyahu employs the American public relations consultant Arthur Finklestein to help him get his image right. But Mr Netanyahu is also a consummate politician. When he came to power, the former diplomat and government spokesman was called the master of the television sound bite.

For a while he got stuck with that well-worn label - the Teflon Prime Minister. But in high tech Israel, Mr Netanyahu is now known, in some circles, as the Virtual Prime Minister - a politician who lives in a computer-like bubble of virtual reality. Those who use this label are usually those who want Mr Netanyahu out of their real live government. But Mr Netanyahu insists, confidently of course, that he's here to stay until the year 2000, and beyond.

But it doesn't take a magician, indeed, not even a mathematician, to realise the numbers are stacked against him. Mr Netanyahu's coalition has 61 seats in the 120 member house. He can also count on the support of two ultra-nationalists. Previous Israeli governments have happily ruled with similar margins. But no other Prime Minister has had to live with open revolt in his own ranks.

Some of Mr Netanyahu's so-called partners dislike him more intensely than his political rivals. This is the other side of the Bibi magic - he survives partly because those around him don't have the nerve to leave him, and to go back to the voters.

But the issues on the table now go to the very heart of what Israel is about - how much land will Israel cede to the Palestinians in its troop redeployment from the West Bank. Will Orthodox Judaism continue to hold the monopoly over performing Jewish rituals in Israel.

Mr Netanyahu is facing threats from the right and the left of his coalition. He's heard it all before. But, as we've seen with some politicians like Mr Levy, politicians, like journalists, can get tired of going around in circles, saying the same thing.
 

Back to top | BBC News Home | BBC Homepage	©