Benjamin Netanyahu has what kindly observers might describe as a credibility problem. Travelling in Europe this week, the Israeli prime minister said he was straining every sinew to restart peace talks with the Palestinians. His interlocutors were unconvinced. Mr Netanyahu looks too much like a politician running in the cause of standing still.
He is not helped by the company he keeps. Avigdor Lieberman, the ultra-conservative foreign minister in Israel’s Likud-led government, poured scorn on the diplomatic mission even before Mr Netanyahu had left Israel. Recalling the procession of failed initiatives since the Oslo accords, Mr Lieberman ventured that the next 16 years offered scarcely better prospects. Talk in Washington of a two-year march to an Israeli-Arab settlement was whistling in the wind.
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