“One late night, while I sat with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the middle of negotiating what would become the Hebron protocol, he told me ‘I will do what Ben-Gurion did.’ I knew he was a disciple of the ‘revisionist’ movement, bitter enemies of David Ben-Gurion, so I said ‘you mean Menachem Begin.’ And he shot back: ‘No, not Begin, Ben-Gurion — he did the big stuff.’

“As I wrestled to understand why Netanyahu seems so determined to press ahead with annexation of the West Bank territories allotted to Israel in the Trump plan, I began to think again about that conversation. Netanyahu is a no-holds-barred Israeli politician, yet throughout his tenure as prime minister he has been risk-averse when it comes national security…”

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