Uzi Landau

Uzi Landau was born on August 2, 1943, in Haifa.[1] His father, Haim Landau, was a member of the Irgun who went on to serve as a Knesset member and minister for the Herut movement, the ideological forerunner of Likud.[2] Uzi Landau grew up in Haifa and later lived in Ra'anana.[3]

He served in the Israel Defense Forces' Paratroopers Brigade and reached the rank of major.[1][4] His professional formation was in engineering and systems analysis: he earned undergraduate and master's degrees in Systems Analysis from the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Transportation Systems Analysis from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[3]

Before entering national politics, Landau lectured at the Technion and served as director-general of the Ministry of Transportation.[5][2] He also held board positions at El-Al Israel Airlines, the Israel Port Authority, the Israel Airport Authority, the Society for the Protection of Nature, and Si'ah Vasig, the Israel Debating Society.[5][4]

Landau had served as a platoon commander in the Paratroopers Brigade and later fought under Ariel Sharon's command during the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War.[6][7] He would later praise Sharon's military leadership, calling him "perhaps the greatest field general that we have had in our country's modern history."[7]

On October 6, 1973, Landau was a thirty-year-old Ph.D. student in Boston. He initially did not answer his father's telephone call because it was Yom Kippur; a friend subsequently told him that war had broken out. After the fast ended, he contacted the Israeli embassy in Washington and flew to Israel two days later, leaving behind his wife Naomi and their children, including their one-month-old daughter Michal. His father met him at the airport and told him that his battalion was waiting near Rephidim to cross the Suez Canal. Landau rejoined his company as an additional platoon commander, and the canal-crossing operation began two days later.[6]

In a 2015 interview, Landau recalled that he first encountered Benjamin Netanyahu shortly after the war, while both men were students at MIT. Landau was leading a pro-Israel student organization and gave Netanyahu a leaflet; Netanyahu suggested improvements, and Landau invited him to a meeting where he presented his ideas. Landau later reflected, "Some blame me for bringing him to Likud, but I am proud of it."[8]

Landau was first elected to the Knesset in 1984 on the Likud list and chaired the 11th Knesset's Subcommittee for Soviet Jewry. He was reelected on the Likud list in 1988, 1992, 1996, 1999, and 2003, giving him six consecutive election victories through the 16th Knesset.[1] He also chaired the Likud Policy Committee from 1994.[3]

His committee work ranged across Israeli governance. In the 12th Knesset he chaired the Subcommittee on the Defense Budget; in the 14th he chaired the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee; and in the 15th he chaired the State Control Committee.[4] He also served on the Economic Affairs, Immigration and Absorption, and Internal Affairs and Environment committees. Internationally, he chaired a Knesset delegation to the European Parliament, served with the delegation to the Council of Europe, and participated in Israel's delegation to the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference.[5][3]

This sustained committee work, particularly in foreign affairs, defense, and state oversight, preceded his appointment to cabinet positions involving public security, strategic affairs, infrastructure, and energy.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appointed Landau Minister of Public Security in March 2001.[5][1] He held that post until February 2003, when he remained in government as a minister in the Prime Minister's Office. His responsibilities included oversight of the intelligence community and strategic relations with the United States.[9]

As Minister of Public Security, Landau issued two significant directives to Israel's police. The first concerned changing Israel's policing approach in Jerusalem, stopping Palestinian excavations on the Temple Mount, and addressing Palestinian Authority security bodies operating in the city. The second directed police staff to prepare groundwork for a separation zone between Israel and the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and Gaza, with the stated aim of preventing suicide bombings and infiltration into Israeli population centers.[10] Landau later said that when the concept reached the government, it became the security-fence plan and that the police were already prepared for it.[10]

After returning to electoral politics through Yisrael Beiteinu, Landau was appointed Minister of National Infrastructures in March 2009.[11] The ministry was renamed the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources in 2012, and he held the portfolio until March 2013.[5] He became Minister of Tourism when the thirty-third government was sworn in on March 18, 2013, and served until May 2015.[12][5]

A 2012 Congressional Research Service report listed Landau among the fourteen members of Israel's security cabinet. It placed him outside the smaller group of eight ministers, known as the octet, on whose opinions Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tended to rely most closely.[13]

Landau's tenure at the Ministry of National Infrastructures, later Energy and Water Resources, coincided with a major transformation in Israel's energy sector. He noted that Israel used no natural gas in 2003, whereas by 2015 natural gas fueled 40 percent of the country's electricity production.[14]

Landau argued that the 2011 explosion of the Egyptian gas pipeline supplying Israel, and the resulting concern about shortages, power outages, and higher prices, accelerated the development of Israel's domestic gas reserves. He called the development of the Tamar field, discovered in 2009 and online by April 2013, a major national achievement.[14] As minister, he wrote to Prime Minister Netanyahu urging an immediate decision to advance Tamar production. He warned that uncertainty about its supply timetable could lead a major energy company, followed by other customers, to purchase Egyptian gas instead. He cited reliable, affordable, and cleaner electricity, a steady gas supply, and anticipated royalties and production-tax revenue as reasons to proceed.[15]

A Federal Register notice reported that Landau was committed to attracting foreign companies for continued gas exploration and eventual exports. The document estimated Israel's offshore natural-gas reserves at around 30 trillion cubic feet.[16] Landau also criticized over-regulation and inconsistent policymaking that he believed deterred investors, arguing that a stable business environment should be treated as a national priority.[14]

In December 2010, Landau submitted an emergency water plan to the cabinet during Israel's seventh consecutive year of drought. It proposed increasing desalination at existing facilities, building additional plants, digging emergency wells, reviewing water imports, and curbing demand. The cabinet did not vote on the plan at that meeting, although the prime minister instructed the tenders committee to increase desalination output by 100–120 million cubic meters annually.[17]

In 2011, Landau decided to convert four of the six coal-fired turbines at the Orot Rabin power station in Hadera to natural gas, retaining coal as backup. He also froze planning for a permanent liquefied-natural-gas terminal and directed officials to pursue a floating LNG facility for operation by the end of 2012. He presented both measures as means of ensuring continuous gas supplies and predicted that the turbine conversions would provide cheaper, cleaner electricity within three years.[18]

One significant policy shift in Landau's career was his evolution from opponent to advocate of a physical barrier separating Israel from Judea and Samaria. In a presentation delivered in December 2003 and published the following month, he stated: "I was against such a fence and against such a separation for many years," but said the wave of terrorism had compelled him to reconsider.[10]

Landau presented the fence as one element of a broader defensive system intended to intercept suicide attackers and minimize Israeli casualties. He argued that Palestinian leaders had rejected opportunities for statehood after the 1947 UN partition resolution and the 1978 Camp David accords, and that the 2000 Camp David talks were followed by a wave of terrorism. He further maintained that terrorism followed Israel's transfer of civilian control over more than 97 percent of the Palestinian population under the Oslo agreement and that Palestinian commitments under the Roadmap had not been honored.[10]

Landau said concrete wall sections made up roughly four percent of the barrier and were built beside Tulkarm and Kalkilya on the pre-1967 armistice line, in areas where Palestinians had previously fired at Israeli vehicles. He acknowledged that the route would separate some Palestinian families from their fields, said gates had been provided, and conceded that access would remain inconvenient for some.[10]

He argued that the fence would not foreclose future negotiations and could be relocated if the parties agreed on a different separation line. In the event of a peace agreement, he said, it could be replaced by a simpler barrier between neighboring countries. He also maintained that the status of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, like the fence's route, could be negotiated.[10]

Landau's opposition to Prime Minister Sharon's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip and northern Judea and Samaria became one of the defining episodes of his political career. The Knesset approved the plan on October 26, 2004, by 67 votes to 45, with seven abstentions and one member absent.[19] Landau voted against it, and Sharon dismissed him from the government following the vote.[20][21]

Landau later entered the contest for Likud leader before withdrawing and declaring support for Netanyahu.[20] In its account of the 2005 leadership contest, the Congressional Research Service characterized him as a "staunch opponent of disengagement."[22] Landau subsequently described his stand against the withdrawal as the peak of his political career, stating in a 2015 interview, "I stood up for my principles and did not concede." He also said that he had never voted to release prisoners convicted of terrorism and once flew back from Central America specifically to vote against a prisoner release.[8]

Likud won twelve seats in the 2006 election, leaving Landau, who had been placed fourteenth on its list, outside the Knesset. In February 2007, he declined to take Danny Naveh's seat after Naveh left parliament and resigned his position on the Likud Knesset list.[23]

In 2008, Landau announced that he was joining Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beiteinu as its second-ranked candidate. He described Likud as his political home since youth but said it was losing its identity, adding that he had found more partners for his views on security, the Roadmap, and disengagement within Yisrael Beiteinu.[23] In the February 2009 election, the party won fifteen seats, and Landau was the second-highest-ranked member elected from its list.[24]

Throughout his parliamentary and ministerial career, Landau was a consistent voice on the Israeli right on territorial and security questions. As Tourism Minister in 2014, he argued that Israel had lost essential security "red lines" during successive negotiations and criticized the practice of beginning each new round from the endpoint of the preceding one. He maintained that the Jordan Valley should remain under Israeli sovereignty, describing it as vital to Israel's future security and part of the Land of Israel.[7]

During a 2013 cabinet debate over Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Landau invoked Abba Eban's reported description of the 1967 lines as "Auschwitz borders," asking: "What country wants to reach the limits where it can't defend itself?" He cited the Gaza withdrawal as a warning, contending that Israel had "got Hamas and terrorism from the start."[25]

In April 2014, after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas took steps to join fifteen international agencies, Landau said Israel could respond by annexing territory or imposing financial sanctions: "If they are now threatening [to go to UN institutions], they must know something simple: They will pay a heavy price."[26]

Landau's tenure at the Tourism Ministry also included religious diplomacy. He met Jerusalem's Latin and Greek Orthodox patriarchs and participated in events intended to promote Christian tourism to Israel.[7]

Landau left electoral politics with a public record spanning parliamentary security work, cabinet service, infrastructure and energy policy, and defense-industry governance. In December 2014, he announced that he would not stand in the 2015 election and would leave the parliamentary system after approximately thirty-one years of public service, including six years with Yisrael Beiteinu. He said he intended to remain active outside parliament.[9] The Times of Israel reported that his name had not been mentioned in connection with the corruption investigation then involving senior Yisrael Beiteinu figures.[27]

In July 2016, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon agreed on Landau's selection as chairman of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, replacing Yitzhak Gat.[28] The selection drew criticism from Zionist Union MK Ayelet Nahmias-Verbin, who called for a professional search process and questioned the concentration of former Yisrael Beiteinu politicians in senior defense-industry posts. Liberman defended Landau's experience in security and economic affairs.[28] Landau served as chairman for six years before Yuval Steinitz was appointed to replace him in 2023.[29]

Following his departure from electoral politics, Landau also became a Senior Research Fellow at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University and chairman of the Reuth Medical and Rehabilitation Center in Tel Aviv.[5]

Landau is married to Naomi and is the father of three children.[1][6] Their daughter Michal was one month old when he left Boston to fight in the Yom Kippur War in October 1973.[6] He lived in Ra'anana.[3]

Landau's opposition to the Gaza disengagement plan and his dismissal from the Sharon cabinet placed him at the center of a politically charged internal Likud dispute. He subsequently challenged for the party leadership as an opponent of disengagement before withdrawing in favor of Netanyahu.[20][22]

In December 2011, Landau directed the withdrawal of a proposed amendment to the Electricity Law after public protest. The measure would have subjected power production to Chief Rabbinate supervision on Saturdays and holidays and was expected to cost tens of millions of shekels. Landau said its principal aim was to address dangers arising from illegal electricity connections but acknowledged that its wording could be interpreted too broadly and might alter the religion-state status quo.[30]

His selection as Rafael chairman drew criticism that party ties were influencing appointments to senior defense-industry positions. The criticism was reported as an allegation of politicization rather than an established finding of impropriety.[28]

CAMERA reported and disputed an allegation that Landau had advocated forcing Palestinians to relocate to Jordan. It said Landau vehemently denied advocating such a policy and maintained that a quotation attributed to him had been taken out of context. The allegation is therefore treated as contested rather than as an established account of his position.[31]