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Russian Bear Dance
The powerful Avigdor
Lieberman backs out as
the prime minister's
political enforcer.
ERIC SILVER
Israel Correspondent
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political operator. When Netanyahu
launched his campaign for a Knesset
seat in the 1988 elections, Lieberman
signed up as his manager.
"When you get to the top," a friend
of Netanyahu's told the Jerusalem
Report magazine, "you need sweet-
talking, genteel PR types. But to get
you there in the first place, you need
tough guys, with elbows, like
Lieberman."
Five years later, Lieberman man-
aged Netanyahu's barnstorming cam-
paign for the Likud leadership, then
put his elbows to good use rehabilitat-
ing a party demoralized and bankrupt-
ed from its 1992 defeat by Yitzhak
Rabin. He was again in Netanyahu's
corner when he ran for prime minister
in 1996.
As director-general of the prime
minister's office, Lieberman's role was
to keep an eight-party coalition in
order and strengthen his boss's hold
on the Likud grassroots.
vigdor Lieberman's sudden
resignation as director-gen-
eral of the prime minister's
office has won his boss,
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu,
a respite in the civil war with his own
Likud colleagues. However, it has not
brought a cessation of hostilities.
A conspiratorial, bearded bear of a
man, Lieberman was the instrument
of Netanyahu's designs, Mr. Hyde,
some might say, to his Dr. Jekyll.
The prime minister has still to
appease disgruntled ministers and
Knesset members who have
been pressing him hard in
recent weeks to reform inner-
Likud dealings and govern-
ment policy. Meanwhile,
Netanyahu still has to navigate
between peace and territory,
the White House and his own
right-wing constituency.
So will Lieberman's depar-
ture make it easier or harder?
Without too much exagger-
ation, many Israelis dubbed
Lieberman the second most
powerful man in the land. His
is the kind of rags-to-riches
Avigdor Lieberman speaks at a press conference in
story more common in the
Tel Aviv.
United States than in Israel.
Lieberman, 39, made aliyah
Netanyahu and Lieberman, both
from his native Kishinev in Moldova
outsiders, vowed to demolish two
19 years ago. Incongruously, his par-
elites: the left and the old right.
ents had named him Yvette after his
Lieberman
manipulated and bullied,
grandmother.
but overestimated the power direct
While a student at the Hebrew
elections had put in Netanyahu's
University, he worked as a disco
hands
and underestimated the self-
bouncer, a security guard at Ben-
respect and alliances among Likud
Gurion airport and on security at the
ministers.
prime minister's office.
He never understood the resent-
While studying international rela-
ments
he generated. He retreated into
tions, he joined a hard-right student
ethnic
paranoia ("They can't bear to
group led by the future Justice.
see a Russian getting on.").
Minister, Tzahi Hanegbi. Thy were
Lieberinan's orchestration of this
accused of beating up Arab students
month's Likud'convention, where the
on campus, though Lieberman denies
prime
minister appeared to go back on
he ever resorted to violence.
a
promise
to his rebellious ministers,
The Bibi and Yvette show hit the
was the last straw.
road in 1987, when Neta.*Iiii was
Both Netanyahtt and Lieberman
girding to enter Likud politics after a
recognized
that the latter had to sacri-
stint as Israel's ambassador to the
fice
himself
to save his master. But
United Nations. They met at a
don't
bet
that
he'll stay out of the cir-
Jerusalem cocktail party. Lieberman
cles of power for too long. El
was already making his name as a
-
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12/ 5
1997
116
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