REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JERUSALEM - Israel's hardline prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has emerged as the country's top politician with a cautious approach to peace making, saying Israel can never let down its guard if it wants to survive in a hostile region.
This conservative style, which has often enraged even his closest allies abroad, was expected to propel Netanyahu to re-election in Tuesday's parliamentary election. Victory would mean another term for a man who already has served a total of six years as prime minister, more than anyone besides the country's founding father, David Ben-Gurion, who spent nearly 14 years in the top post.
Yet Netanyahu has surprisingly little to show for his efforts on the diplomatic stage.
The reason is the 63-year-old Netanyahu's stand-pat approach: He has refrained from taking bold, yet criticized, steps like those of his predecessors — Ehud Barak's peace offers to Syria and the Palestinians or Ariel Sharon's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Since his 2009 election, Netanyahu instead has sent mixed messages on a variety of fronts. He grudgingly accepted the notion of a Palestinian state in parts of the West Bank, and imposed a partial freeze in settlement building to allow a resumption of peace talks. But he also questioned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' commitment to peace and angered the world with renewed settlement construction.
It's part of the mystery of Netanyahu. It is unclear whether he is a pragmatist who plays to his conservative base with hard-line rhetoric or an ideological hard-liner who pays lip service peace to appease international opinion.
"He's succeeded in doing nothing and therefore he can't be blamed for anything," said Reuven Hazan, a professor of political science at Jerusalem's Hebrew University. "The problem is that the status quo doesn't hold in the Middle East. Things change and time isn't working in our favor. Something has to be done and this inaction doesn't help us."
Still, Netanyahu's popularity has endured, and he appears poised to win another term in Tuesday's vote, having managed to convince many Israelis that he offers a respectable choice by projecting experience, toughness and great powers of communication in both native Hebrew and flawless American English.
Polls show Netanyahu's Likud earning just more than a quarter of parliament's 120-seats in Tuesday's vote, so Netanyahu will likely form a coalition government that could include hard-line and religious parties opposed to territorial concessions.
On the other hand, with a re-elected President Barack Obama and an impatient European leadership expected to put more pressure on him, he may be interested in building a moderate coalition. Either way, Netanyahu's supporters seem drawn to the tough image he has cultivated in dealing with world pressure.
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