Almost two weeks of intense political maneuvering ended yesterday. Many people on the Left were worried by Benjamin Netanyahu's effort to split the opposition Kadima party or to have it join his coalition. Both options, it seemed, would have made the prime ministe even stronger, and everything that's good for Netanyahu is surely bad for the peace process. Or is it?

In general, I tend to oppose the policies of the Netanyahu government. I consider myself to be a member of the Left; I believe that the events of the past year have brought us closer to the end of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank; and possibly also to the end of the siege on Gaza. The current political circumstances are pretty favorable, to the point that if I could have replaced Netanyahu with other Israeli leaders - say Kadima leader Tzipi Livni or Labor leader Ehud Barak - I probably wouldn't want to.

To understand why, we need to dive into the depths of Israel's complex political dynamics.

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If left to do as he wishes, Netanyahu would not make one step to end the Israeli occupation. His ideological background is one that views the West Bank as part of the Land of Israel; he believes that an independent Palestinian state would endanger Israel's national security; and his political base has always been on the Israeli Right.

But political leaders have to consider political circumstances and limitations, and Netanyahu - unlike two previous Likud prime ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Ariel Sharon - is extremely sensitive to outside pressure. And pressure came from the first moment Netanyahu entered his office.

First, there was the new approach from Washington. It's not just Obama, but the whole backlash against the Middle East policy of the Bush administration. Furthermore, the world knew Netanyahu, and remembered him as the man who succeeded Yitzhak Rabin and almost single handedly buried the Oslo Accords. And if somebody was ready to consider the idea of "a new Netanyahu", along came the appointment of Avigdor Liberman to the Foreign Office and fixed the image of this government - quite rightly, I must say - as the most extreme Israel ever had. Even Israel's supporters have encountered difficulties over the last year while explaining the prime minister's fondness for settling the West Bank, or defending the daily gaffe by the Foreign Minister.

And there was the war in Gaza. It's hard to grasp the huge gap between the opinion of the international community and that of mainstream Israelis to Operation Cast Lead. Israelis see the war as a justified, even heroic, act against Hamas' aggression - which was the Palestinian response to the good faith we showed in withdrawing from the Gaza strip. Most of the international community see Operation Cast Lead as a barbaric attack on (mostly) innocent civilians.

And while the Goldstone Report might never be adopted by the UN Security Council, the response it engendered made it clear that in the near future - unless something very dramatic happens to change everything (we always have to add this sentence in the post 9/11 world, don't we?) - there won't be another Cast Lead. The world won't allow it.

All these elements - the change in Washington, the suspicious welcome the world gave Netanyahu and the respond to the war in Gaza - are forcing Netanyahu to do something he never planned, at least with regard to the Palestinians: he is being forced to act. That's why he announced the settlement moratorium, and that's why he is willing, according to today's reports, to negotiate a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, and even to talk about the status of Jerusalem. And this is the man who won the 1996 elections after he accused Shimon Peres of agreeing to divide the Israeli capital city.

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Yes, I would have preferred a Hadash-Meretz government. But this isn't, and such a government won't be an option in this generation. Right now, the political leaders with a shot at the prime minister's office are Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak, maybe Shaul Mofaz and, God forbid, Avigdor Liberman. Next in line after them are people with basically the same agenda.

I don't trust Ehud Barak. I don't know what drives him, I don't think anyone understands what his views are, and I believe he has at least partial responsibility for the failure of the Camp David summit and the negotiations with the Syrians - and all that followed this failure.

With Kadima and Livni, it's even worse. Under Ehud Olmert, this party brought to perfection the art of talking about peace and declaring wars. Olmert offered the Palestinians, so it is said, just about everything; but in reality, all they got from him were bombs. At the time, the international community believed the Israeli PM was truly seeking peace, so it didn't look so harshly when he opened fire. With Netanyahu it's the other way around: the international community keeps a watchful eye on every move he makes.

There is a point which must be understood regarding the negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians: the currency Israel is expected to pay in negotiations is land, so Israeli leaders will always prefer talks to actual actions. The Palestinians are expected to pay in legitimacy (to Israel), so for them, negotiating is the problem. When they recognize Israel and sit at the table with its leaders, they are already giving their part in the deal.

The State Department understood this recently. According to a source there, the Palestinian leadership "wants a deal with Israel without any negotiations" and Israel's leadership "wants negotiations with the Palestinians without any deal."

To break this dynamic, once negotiations start, there must be constant pressure on the Israeli side to deliver the goods. Otherwise, talks will go on forever. The pressure is more important than the actual identity of the Israel prime minister. As I write above, the current circumstances are leading the world to apply this pressure on Netanyahu in a way it never did - and probably never will - on the prime ministers from Labor or Kadima.

To that we must add the question of the prime minister's personality. I hope I won't be proven wrong here, but from what I observe, Netanyahu - unlike his image - is very careful with the use of military power. During his previous term, when violent clashes occurred between Palestinians and Israelis over the Kotel Tunnel incident, Netanyahu went out of his way to stop the fire. He even hugged Yasser Arafat. Compare that to Ehud Barak's response to the October 2000 events, or to the Olmert-Livni cabinet, which started two wars.

Sometimes, we should judge leaders by what they do, not just by what they say, and Netanyahu is the only Israeli prime minister in almost two decades who did not start a wide scale military operation against the Palestinians or a neighboring Arab country. That includes the six months Shimon Peres was prime minister, which was sufficient time for him to start the 1996 operation in Lebanon. I hope Netanyahu's record doesn't change. It's actually nice to know we have a leader with a little less blood on his hands.

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Another point to consider: only Likud governments evacuated settlements (it happened twice - in the Sinai Peninsula and in Gaza). It is no coincidence: with the Jewish public usually split on such questions, and even slightly against territorial concessions, a leader from the Left has to face enormous opposition for the evacuation, while a leader from the Likud has only the extreme right to fight.

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At this point it must seem like I've joined the ever expanding Israeli cult of "former-lefties", or at least the Netanyahu fan club. Far from it. I still think that Bibi doesn't want to leave the West Bank, and even if he changes his mind, I'm not sure he is up to this task, which already left one prime minster dead, and possibly the other (Ariel Sharon) in a coma. It's just that the political circumstances, for the first time in this wasted decade, are working in the right direction, and they might not work that well if Barak or Livni were to be in Netanyahu's place (*).

Yes, Gaza is still under siege - but it wasn't Netanyahu who initiated it. Israel is still building settlements, but not at the rate previous governments did. Some roadblocks are removed, the West Bank's economy improving slightly - and for the first time, the world is really keeping an eye on Israel's actions, even in East Jerusalem. Things are far from perfect, even far from reasonable, but at least in the West Bank, they are better than at any other time this decade.

Even more importantly, there is finally some sense of urgency that reached the Israeli politicians, media and even public regarding the diplomatic process. Less than a year ago I complained here that nobody cares about the occupation or the peace process anymore. These days, statements from Ramallah, Jerusalem and Washington are back on the front pages of the papers, and politicians are promoting their ideas for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. This is something we haven't seen in a long time. It's not because Israelis finally understood what's wrong with the occupation - it's because the world is leaving them no choice.

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My bottom line, and the reason for this post, is regarding what needs to be done. The Israeli Left, and all those opposing the occupation here and abroad, shouldn't occupy themselves with hopes of political change in Israel. Chances are it won't happen soon, and even if it does, it probably won't help much, for the reasons I explained.

But international pressure on Israel does help. In less than a year, it achieved what four years of terror attacks did not. Activism works. Internet campaigns, students campaigns, lobbying, civil and human rights campaigns, settlements monitoring project, UN and EU resolutions - and yes, with all the mistakes he might have made, one Barack Obama - all these make Israelis remember that the international community doesn't accept the occupation anymore, and that their time is running out: either they get out of the West Bank and have the Palestinians have their civil rights in their own state, or they chose to stay there and let them live as equal citizens in the State of Israel.

Israelis may complain of double standards, ask why the world couldn't pick on China or Sudan (truth is it does), but in the end, the pressure gets to us. It makes pundits suggest new ideas and politicians explore new positions, since everybody fear that any solution forced by the international community will surly be worse than the one we come up with. And with time, this pressure might even cause the son of Ben-Zion Netanyahu make some surprising moves.

Happy New Year.

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* The real problem with Netanyahu's government is its human right record inside Israel and most notably, the way it treats the Arab citizens, but for this New Year's Eve, let's look on the bright side

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