There are many downsides to Israel's tendency to recycle its leaders--its perpetual inability to find new leaders instead of the already-tested-and-weren't-impressive-enough ones. But this habit has some benefits as well: The recycled leaders tend to learn from their own mistakes. When Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister in the mid-70s, he went through one of the worst crises between an American and Israeli government--President Gerald Ford's so-called "reassessment." Rabin's reincarnation as prime minister in the 90s was a stark contrast: He and Bill Clinton hit it off right at the start, and never stopped loving one another until Rabin's bitter end and Clinton's heart-wrenching eulogy.
Ariel Sharon had a similar evolution. Serving as defense minister in the 80s, he angered the Reagan administration by launching the first Lebanon War. But as foreign minister in the first Benjamin Netanyahu government in the late 90s, Sharon opened back channels to American officials in the Clinton administration. Later, when Sharon himself became the prime minister, he almost always made sure to be on the same page as the Bush administration.
Netanyahu did not enjoy the luxury of having close and intimate relations with the American president during his first turn as prime minister. He was elected when the Clinton team was rooting for his rival of the Labor Party, Rabin's successor Shimon Peres, and he was raising his voice against the Oslo Accords much before most people realized its inherent problems.
Netanyahu is now having his second chance at making things work with the Americans, and most bets are against him. Obama and Bibi will be meeting early next week, and "collision course" is among its most common descriptions by experts and pundits--mostly those on both sides of the spectrum who don't want Obama and Netanyahu to get along. Collision, of course, is possible. The level of apprehension in Israel regarding the possibility of a nuclearized Iran is much higher than the one the U.S. demonstrates, and some Israelis in high office have come to the conclusion that the Obama administration doesn't show the toughness necessary for stopping it. On the other hand, the Obama team really doesn't understand what is it that Netanyahu is trying to achieve by what they think is an almost childish refusal to utter the words "two," "state," and "solution" in one soothing (even if insincere) sentence.
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