An alarming day. This article confirms what I’ve been hearing: That he’s the odds on favorite to be Israel’s next PM. Having lived in Israel during some of his last tenure, I find him troubling, morally questionable, and frighteningly doctrainaire.

Former premier Benjamin Netanyahu, who is set to be re-elected as head of Israel’s right-wing Likud party on Tuesday, is a media-savvy arch-hawk determined to move back to the political centre stage.

Netanyahu was expected to sweep to victory during a Likud primary with at least 70 percent of the vote, according to internal opinion polls, in a contest against two other candidates.
Fifteen months after leading Likud to its biggest-ever electoral defeat, the 57-year-old politician is determined to use his expected victory in the primary to bury the humiliation and return to the country’s leadership.
Bibi, as Netanyahu is widely known in Israel, is hoping to ride a wave of dissapointment with the ruling Kadima party over scandals and last year’s Lebanon war back to the top of the Israeli political spectrum.
The right-wing party had the wind knocked out of it after former prime minister Ariel Sharon decided in November 2005 to quit and form the centrist Kadima, today headed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
With Netanyahu at the helm, Likud that had dominated Israeli politics since its first election victory in 1977 managed to scrape together only 12 seats in the 120-member parliament.
The defeat marked a devastating turn of fortunes for the politician who 11 years before became Israel’s youngest prime minister.