I want to commend my friend and tpm colleague Bernie Avishai for his post re Jeff Goldberg. I had to check twice when I read Jeff's piece in yesterday's NYT for the byline-that it wasn't signed by Uzi Arad, one of his top security advisors and a man with a well-known hawkish position re Iran and Israel's place in the Arab world.

There is a fight for Bibi's soul. The old Likudnik way of doing things--translated as force works--is up for grabs. And there are several key components out there that never existed before. Here they are:

First, as widely acknowledged, a strong and popular U.S. president with a keen understanding of what his vision is for the region, of how to get from A to B, and advisors around him--many of whom who are Jewish and know not only the geopoliticals but the 'all politics is local' piece too-
Second, an opposition that has his back. Yes, Bibi has an unwieldly, right-center (more right than center, after all) government, but he also has a waiting opposition that could come into the government at an opportune moment and promote a peace agreement, something that the center-left governments never have.
Third, he has modernizing forces in the Arab world, led by King Abdullah of Jordan and others who feel his pain in one major respect. They, too, are unnerved by Iran and by fundamentalists in their region--but they know that you can't fight this trend with force; you must create facts on the ground that stabilize the modernizers and they appear willing to do that if Bibi meets them on this.
Fourth, there are friends of Israel in Europe. The Sarkozy government is seen as a friend of Israel's, in a way that the Chirac government was not and with the importance of France to the EU and the large and influential Jewish community in France--many of whom have Likud relatives in Israel--this is a small, but important matter.
Fifth, there are Palestinians to talk to, but time is running out. The Nationalist camp in Palestine must be strengthened. Bibi has advisors, for sure, who are telling him this.
Sixth, there is a tremendous economic advantage to Israel to take these steps and run with them. Bibi, a man of international finance and a fan of globlization and Israel's role in a globalized world, knows this. The alternative could be a dangerous economic status and continued brain drain in Israel (after all, at some point, those young, brilliant Israelis who returned home to Israel with the current financial crisis in the US and Europe will surely return to the diaspora after the global economy picks up again if they don't feel that they have the opportunity in a normalizing Israel that is integrating into the region and the world....

So, Bibi's back is covered. This week, there will be all sorts of frontal shots-the handshakes, the smiles, the whispers mouthed over closed microphones. Perhaps patience is called for here--but not too much because there isn't too much time before the equation falls apart....