ISTANBUL

A veteran diplomat and geopolitical analyst has dubbed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the world’s “most cunning, most ruthless leader.”

“I have the great privilege of meeting lots of leaders, but if you ask me to name the most cunning, and the most ruthless leader in the world today, I would say it is Bibi Netanyahu,” Kishore Mahbubani told Melanie Oliveiro, the host of the radio show Daily Cuts on Channel News Asia.

Mahbubani, 75, is an author and veteran diplomat, who represented Singapore at the UN in 1984-1989, and again between 1998 and 2004, when he was the president of the UN Security Council in 2001-2002.

The diplomat, a friend of Netanyahu, said the Israeli prime minister was “intellectually brilliant, … absolutely brilliant.”

According to Oliveiro, Mahbubani hosted Netanyahu and his wife for dinner at his residence in New York some years back.

“But at the same time, sadly, and I say this as friend of Israel, he is not leading the country in the right direction,” Mahbubani told Oliveiro, who called Netanyahu a “controversial figure.”

“Netanyahu has got to decide between taking care of his own personal concerns of avoiding going to jail and or taking care of national concerns of Israel,” said Mahbubani, quoting New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.

Referring to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, Mahbubani said: “Israel today has a remarkable opportunity to make peace with its Arab neighbors.”

“It will guarantee peace and stability for the people of Israel and at the same it will enable the Palestinian people to have a nation of their own. This is what they call two-state solution,” said Mahbubani, adding that Israelis had been “so traumatized by what happened on Oct. 07. They are reacting in anger rather than wisely.”

Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an attack last October by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

Over 39,600 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and nearly 91,400 injured, according to local health authorities.

Over 10 months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.