Two Israeli politicians to keep an eye on

Prime Minister Netanyahu's picks for two top posts are both from former Soviet states, but they have different styles.

Matt Beynon ReesApril 23, 2009 11:04Updated May 30, 2010 12:53

Natan Sharansky holds a news conference in Jerusalem Nov. 20, 2007. Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident and former member of Israeli parliament, opposes any future division of the city of Jerusalem. (Yonathan Weitzman/Reuters)

JERUSALEM — So, there are two eastern European guys, one from Ukraine and the other from Moldova.

One of them is on the short side and is a chess whiz who suffered through a Siberian labor camp for his uncompromising belief in democracy and freedom. Meet Natan Sharansky, who was picked this weekend by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lead the Jewish Agency for Israel.

The other is a beefy former nightclub bouncer who says nasty things about Arabs and is generally seen as just plain uncompromising. Meet Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who, it’s fair to say, is feared and loathed as a hardliner.

The two men couldn't carry themselves more differently and you don't have to be a longtime observer of Israel to know which one fits in better with the western diplomatic community and is most favored by America.

Trouble is they’re essentially the same guy.

Both reflect something unbending in current Israeli political thinking. But international diplomats will make a mistake if they ignore the reality signaled by the popularity of these two politicians and its consequences for the peace maneuvers that got underway this last week.

Sharansky pulled out of former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s government in 2005 to protest the Israeli withdrawal from its Gaza settlements and has since been occupying an office in a right-wing think thank in Jerusalem — when he hasn’t been touring the U.S. on high-paying speaking gigs.

Lieberman, meanwhile, lives in a settlement, drove his party to third place in the country’s February election with a promise of imposing a loyalty oath on Arab citizens of Israel, and, in his first statement as foreign minister, said "If you want peace, prepare for war."

That classically Lieberman aphorism prompted gritted teeth at the State Department, which sent special envoy George Mitchell to Ramallah and Cairo recently to prepare the U.S. plan for handling the new Israeli government.

But in their different ways, Sharansky and Lieberman are both saying the same thing: Israelis are tired of being pressured to hand over land to Palestinians, while the Palestinians ignore the world’s polite requests for an end to terrorism.