STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
Here's NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro.
LOURDES GARCIA: Prime Minister Netanyahu gave an interview at the end of last month to Israel's Channel 10, and the first question out of the presenter's mouth...
GARCIA: (Foreign language spoken)
GARCIA: The journalist was referring to a speech that Avigdor Lieberman gave to foreign ambassadors in Israel the night before.
M: (Foreign language spoken)
GARCIA: David Horowitz is the editor of The Jerusalem Post.
M: What you have here are a pair of ambitious politicians - one of whom is the prime minister, the other of whom, in my opinion, certainly would like to be and thinks that he may be in time.
GARCIA: Netanyahu was born here and has a history of political service. His party, Likud, has long been a part of the political establishment and takes a more nuanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, endorsing peace talks. And, says Horowitz, the two men have very different ways of getting their message across.
M: Netanyahu is, you know, now in his second term as prime minister. He's very capable of sensitive rhetoric and crafting sophisticated messages. He's very good in public. Lieberman is much blunter and delights in that. He wants his audience to understand very clearly that he's very pessimistic about this or he's very certain about that, so the rhetorical styles are very, very different.
GARCIA: Itzhak Galnoor is a professor of political science at Hebrew University. He says Lieberman uses the Foreign Ministry to push forward his party's agenda, and that often puts him in conflict with the prime minister.
INSKEEP: We have a minister of foreign affairs that doesn't distinguish between his state responsibilities and his party goals. He behaves like a party leader and uses the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to advocate a partisan view. And so in this sense he doesn't represent - not only the government, doesn't even represent the state of Israel, or even the coalition.
GARCIA: Dore Gold is the head of a right-wing think tank with close ties to the government. He says the concerns over tensions between the two men are overblown. He notes that members of the prime minister's cabinet come from different parties, including left-leaning Labor.
M: It's true there's been a lot of focus on the relations between Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But look at the case of Defense Minister Ehud Barak. He has given public addresses speaking about Israel dividing Jerusalem, which is completely against the policies of the Likud Party - certainly against Mr. Lieberman's party. So is that a problem? It's a parliamentary democracy. There are different views.
GARCIA: Gold acknowledges, though, that that reality often makes it hard to distinguish what the real policies of the Israeli government are.
INSKEEP: Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, NPR News, Jerusalem.