Antonio Ferrari / Corriere

It’s a world that’s really going in the opposite direction. When stubbornly deployed against those who believe in peace and progress, the (often violent) hardliners’ front is strengthened and the surprises are heightened. I never would have imagined, for example, that Benjamin Netanyahu, ally and friend of that criminal dictator Vladimir Putin and coup leader Donald Trump, would return to the top of Israel. With a majority backed by an extreme right that couldn’t be more extreme, Bibi is back and is truly an insult to Israel, the country I’ve always loved, where the true majority expresses the people, proud, tolerant, liberal and eager. Wearing Vera. I’ve known Pepe for decades, but we all know him. Confused, unpresentable, especially in love with himself, a thousand miles away from feeling his country. A true political acrobat, capable of anything. Israel’s vote and the accounts that supported it are proof that we can no longer fully comprehend and fully understand this crazy world, where not the one who knows how to think but the one who unleashes the greatest manipulation wins. Bibi has won, but it is not certain that she will be able to rule Israel. It is also true that it is trying to turn around, as our excellent Jerusalem correspondent David Frattini wrote in the Corriere della Sera newspaper, some centrist parties are even softening their position. But he is certainly a loser in international politics. US President Joe Biden can’t stand him, because he knows that he is against the two-state solution, Israel and Palestine, that live side by side in peace and security, and respect each other. It is clear that Bibi cannot boycott the peace agreement with Lebanon, which has imposed itself by force on the maritime borders, thanks to the discovery by ENI of the world’s largest gas field in the eastern Mediterranean. Nor can it criticize international agreements to support and protect Ukraine from the brutal aggression of Putin’s Russian Federation. But above all, he will have to commit himself to allaying the fears of a country that Bibi has never understood. Israel is a pearl of democracy in the Middle East, and in the end either it will change or it will have to leave.