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After his military service, Netanyahu returned to the US and received a BA in architecture and an MA business administration at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then started working for the Boston Consultant Group. At the same time he engaged in propaganda activities in the US on behalf of the State of Israel. After his brother Yonatan (Yoni) was killed leading the Entebbe Operation in July 1976, Netanyahu returned to Israel and started to advocate international cooperation in fighting terrorism. In 1980 he set up and headed the Jonathan Institute for the Study of Terrorism, and started working as marketing manager at Rim, a Jerusalem furniture company.

From 1982-84 Netanyahu served in the Israeli Embassy in Washington under then ambassador Moshe Arens, and from 1984-88 as Israeli Ambassador to the UN. In this capacity he insisted on opening files on Nazi war criminals in the UN archives, and frequently appeared in the American media to explain Israeli positions.

In 1988 Netanyahu was elected to the 12th Knesset on the Likud list, and served as deputy foreign minister under Arens from 1988-90, during which period he expressed support for the idea of "Jordan is Palestine." Following the fall of the national unity government in March 1990, and David Levy's appointment as foreign minister, Netanyahu was appointed deputy minister in the Prime Minister's Office. In this capacity he participated in the Madrid Conference, where he was Israel's main spokesman.

Netanyahu was one of the few staunch advocates in the Likud for instituting the direct election of the prime minister and after Labor's victory in the elections to the 13th Knesset in 1992, he supported the institution of primaries for the election of the Likud chairman and candidate for the premiership. In the Likud leadership primary on March 25, 1993, Netanyahu was elected by a majority of 52.1%. In this period he expressed hawkish views, and spoke in favor of massive privatization of government-owned companies and state lands.

Netanyahu ran for prime minister in May 1996 under the slogan of "Peace with Security" against Labor's Shimon Peres, and received 50.49% of the votes (in absolute numbers, he received just under 30,000 votes more than Peres).

Despite his reservations about the recognition of the PLO and the Oslo process, Netanyahu met with Yasser Arafat in September 1996 and his government signed the Hebron Agreement in January 1997 and the Wye River Memorandum in October 1998. However, except for these two agreements and the persisting good relations with Jordan, progress in the peace process with the Arab world came to a near standstill. Following the fourth MENA (Middle East and North Africa) Economic Conference, held in Qatar in November 1997, no additional conference was scheduled.

Despite optimistic economic forecasts, during the two and a half years of Netanyahu's premiership the rate of economic growth fell drastically and unemployment rose. Netanyahu blamed the budget deficit inherited by his government from the previous Labor government for the situation. Netanyahu's premiership was characterized by an attempt to undermine some of the old Úlite groups identified with Labor and the Left, and by a large number of resignations by senior ministers -- David Levy from the Foreign Ministry, Dan Meridor and his successor Yaakov Neeman from the Finance Ministry, and Yitzhak Mordechai from the Defense Ministry (though Netanyahu fired Mordechai before Mordechai had a chance to resign). These resignations resulted from a combination of differences of opinion over policy and mistrust that developed between the prime minister and the various ministers.

Two political scandals, which occurred during Netanyahu's premiership and in which he was personally involved, were his support of the appointment of Ronnie Bar-On as attorney-general in January 1997 and his approval of an attempt by the Mossad to assassinate a Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal, in Jordan in October 1997.

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Links in this section:

Ehud Barak      Fact File      In-depth Profile      Interview Ze'ev Binyamin Begin      Fact File      In-depth Profile      Interview Azmi Bishara      Fact File      In-depth Profile      Interview

Yitzhak Mordechai      Fact File      In-depth Profile      Interview Binyamin Netanyahu      Fact File      In-depth Profile      Interview