BENJAMIN Netanyahu, the great Houdini of Israeli politics, has done it again. A day after returning from the Wye Plantation peace summit with Yasser Arafat, Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, defied his own ultra-nationalists to defeat yet another motion of no confidence.
His center-right coalition government commands a bare majority of 61 to 59 in the Knesset, the single-chamber Israeli parliament. And at least two Cabinet members from his own party—the science and transportation ministers—had threatened to vote against the agreement reached at Wye. But in the end, the no-confidence motion commanded only eight votes and the two ministers ducked the vote and stayed in the cabinet. After yet another political cliffhanger, Netanyahu lives to fight another day.
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