Government > Leaders Stats: compare key data on Iraq & Israel

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STAT	Iraq	Israel	HISTORY
Head of state > Term limit for head of state	4 Ranked 122nd.	7 Ranked 7th. 75% more than Iraq
President	Jalal Talabani	Shimon Peres
President > Profile	<p>Jalal Talabani - a veteran leader of Iraq&#039;s minority Kurds - became Iraq&#039;s first elected president in more than 50 years in 2005. </p> <p>He was selected for a second term in 2006, and in November 2010 he was picked for another term by members of parliament under a power-sharing deal which followed months of negotiations after inconclusive parliamentary elections in March. </p> <p>His health went into sharp decline in the following two years, and he suffered a stroke in December 2012. He has been undergoing treatment in Germany since then, and is making progress.</p> <p>He became a key player in Iraqi national politics following the toppling of Saddam Hussein in the 2003 US-led invasion, with the Kurds forming a powerful voting bloc in the national parliament. </p> <p>Talabani, who is seen as being close to both the United States and Iran, won praise at the height of Iraq&#039;s sectarian war for building bridges between the country&#039;s divided factions. </p> <p>Born in 1933, Mr Talabani rose to a senior position in the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), but split from it in 1974 and helped to form the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan PUK the following year. The KDP and PUK have alternatively been bitter rivals and allies, currently administering the semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan. </p>	<p>The Israeli president has a mainly ceremonial role; executive power is vested in the cabinet, headed by the prime minister. </p> <p>On 13 June 2007, the Israeli parliament chose the veteran politician Shimon Peres to succeed Moshe Katsav, who had taken leave of absence from the presidency earlier in the year after being accused of various sexual offences. </p> <p>The president has in the past been seen by Israelis as the nation&#039;s moral compass, and many hoped that Mr Peres would restore dignity to what they saw as a tarnished office. </p> <p>Mr Peres was a leading member of the Labour party for decades, but left in 2005 and later joined the centrist Kadima party. </p> <p>He twice served as prime minister, and in 1994 was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize when foreign minister in recognition of his role in bringing about the signing of Israel&#039;s first interim peace accord with the Palestine Liberation Organisation in Oslo the previous year. </p>
President > Summary	President Talabani is a veteran of Kurdish and Iraqi national politics	Israel&#039;s elder statesman, Shimon Peres
Prime minister	Nouri al-Maliki	Benjamin Netanyahu
Prime minister > Profile	<p>Nouri al-Maliki, a former rebel who led the first full-time government after the toppling of Saddam Hussein, was picked for a second term as prime minister in November 2010. </p> <p>He was chosen by parliament under a power-sharing agreement after the inconclusive elections of March 2010. Mr al-Maliki&#039;s Shia-backed State of Law coalition came second in the poll, after the Sunni Al-Iraqiya alliance of former premier Iyad Allawi.</p> <p>The national unity government that was approved by parliament in December 2010 included all major factions. It has proved to be fragile and riven by tensions between the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish blocs.</p> <p>At the end of 2011, there were fears of renewed sectarian conflict as the government looked like it might collapse. An arrest warrant was issued for the Sunni deputy vice president, Tareq al-Hashimi, over alleged links to terrorism - accusations which he denied. </p> <p>Observers said it appeared that Mr al-Maliki was trying to consolidate his grip on power by pushing out top Sunni politicians.</p> <p>Born in 1950, Mr al-Maliki fled a death sentence for his political activism in 1980 and lived in exile in Syria and Iran, working for the opposition Shia Islamic Dawa Party. </p> <p>He returned to Iraq after the US-led invasion of 2003 and became a member of the de-Baathification commission that removed Saddam supporters from public office. </p> <p>He was relatively unknown internationally until he was nominated for the premiership in May 2006, after the Sunni Arab and Kurdish parties objected to the reappointment of prime minister Ibrahim Al-Ja&#039;fari. </p> <p>He struggled to control a fractious government forged of fragile alliances and his first two years in office were marked by rampant bloodshed. He emerged stronger after sending the army to fight Shia militia and presiding over a sharp fall in overall violence, but a resurgence of Sunni extremist attacks on Shias and Christians made 2013 the bloodiest year since 2007. </p>	<p>Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the right-wing Likud party, became prime minister after an inconclusive early election in February 2009, a decade after holding the office once before. </p> <p>The outgoing administration, led by the centrist Kadima party, failed to reassemble as a new centre-left coalition, and Mr Netanyahu was able to form a government with the nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, various Jewish religious parties and the centre-left Labour party. He later united Yisrael Beinteinu with Likud in an attempt to form a broad conservative party.</p> <p>This government managed to steer Israel out of the global economic recession, but faced mounting protests about the rising cost of living.</p> <p>It also failed to make any headway in relations with the Palestinians, Jewish settlers on the West Bank and the Obama administration in the United States. </p> <p>During the election Mr Netanyahu had pledged not to transfer land occupied by Israel to a Palestinian state in return for peace, on the grounds that previous Israeli withdrawals had only met with further Palestinian armed attacks. </p> <p>Several months later he angered settlers by accepting the creation of Palestinian state, but his conditions, including its complete demilitarisation. were unacceptable to Palestinian leaders. </p> <p>The prime minister&#039;s refusal to concede a full suspension of settlement activity - a key Palestinian condition for a return to stalled peace talks - frustrated the United States, and a partial suspension of permits for new settlements in 2009-2010 only served to spark angry protests by settlers. </p> <p>Mr Netanyahu&#039;s repeated warnings over the perceived threat of Iran&#039;s nuclear programme have also complicated relations with the US. </p> <p>A coalition dispute over the budget prompted Mr Netanyahu to call an early election in January 2013, which saw a boost for two new secular parties - Yesh Atid in the centre and the pro-settler Jewish Home - in a campaign fought mainly on economic issues. </p> <p>After months of wrangling the prime minister managed to assemble a coalition with these two parties, plus a small splinter group from Kadima, that excluded the Jewish religious parties and raised the possibility of one of Israel&#039;s periodic attempts at rolling back the influence of ultra-Orthodox groups.</p> <p>During his previous term as prime minister in 1996-99 Mr Netanyahu was initially hostile towards the new Palestinian Authority, but went on to show some flexibility while maintaining a security-first policy. </p> <p>Defeated by Labour leader Ehud Barak in 1999, he later served as finance minister under Likud PM Ariel Sharon, pushing through a series of market-oriented reforms before resigning in 2005 in protest at Mr Sharon&#039;s decision to pull out from Gaza. </p> <p>Mr Netanyahu was born in 1949 in Tel Aviv, and spent part of his childhood in the United States where his father was a professor . During his five years in Israel&#039;s army, he served as captain of an elite commando unit. A fluent English-speaker, Mr Netanyahu has long been a prominent advocate for Israel in the international media. </p>
Prime minister > Summary	Iraqi premier Nouri al-Maliki	Mr Netanyahu campaigned on a policy of toughness towards Palestinian militancy

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