Netanyahu caps political comeback with premiership

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Benjamin Netanyahu was the perfect candidate for a comeback in Israel's worried political landscape.

Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran's nuclear designs and Israel's economic ills contributed to a mood of pessimism that provided grist Netanyahu needed to double his right-wing Likud's parliamentary representation in a February election.

Netanyahu, returning as prime minister a decade after he was voted out of the post, may still go by his childhood nickname, Bibi, but the U.S.-raised MIT graduate has never been accused of taking anything but a sombre view of Israel's world.

Witness this exchange on U.S. television some years ago:

"Are you a happy camper?" an interviewer asked Netanyahu.

The man Israelis hail as a master of the soundbite, and of the English language, was silent, then confessed he did not know the term, which to Americans means a sense of contentment.

The son of a Zionist historian, Netanyahu, 59, has cast his return to power as a vindication of the Likud party's long view that ceding occupied Arab land unilaterally had backfired by encouraging Islamist foes.

He is now promoting his plan for an "economic peace" that shifts the focus away from statehood.