Netanyahu: The leader who struts like a superpower

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/netanyahu-the-leader-who-struts-like-a-superpower-1570710.html


Benjamin Netanyahu is favourite to win Tuesday's Israeli election, and that could put him on a collision course with the Obama White House. Donald Macintyre reports


It was Bill Clinton who drily observed after meeting the newly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that "he thinks he is the superpower and we are here to do whatever he requires."


If Mr Netanyahu emerges as victor in next Tuesday's election and in the process of government formation that will follow, he is unlikely to treat President Barack Obama to a repeat of what Mr Clinton's key Middle East aide, Dennis Ross, would later recall as that "nearly insufferable" performance in the White House in 1996.

Mr Netanyahu, who has gone out of his way to be publicly flattering about Mr Obama in recent weeks, knows a little more about diplomacy than he did then; one of several reasons why he lost the election three years later was that the Israeli public was unhappy about how unwelcome their prime minister had become in Washington.
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