Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Painting a smiley face on Netanyahu's Gaza debacle

Netanyahu's goals going into this latest Gaza adventure were clearly articulated and universally broadcast. He would eliminate the ability of the Hamas rocketeers to threaten Israelis, and he would eliminate Hamas as a political force.

It is thunderingly obvious that neither goal was achieved.

Far from it.

Yet Aluf Benn claims that the goals of this exercise in stupidity have been achieved.

To justify this claim the Haaretz editor-in-chief conjures up, post-facto, two new goals entirely out of thin air.

The goals, according to Benn, were to re-establish a truce with Hamas, and to "test" the Morsi government's commitment to the peace treaty.

Were Netanyahu interested in a truce with Hamas he could have respected the last one. As for testing the Morsi government, I think it's pretty clear that Egypt is no longer the Egypt of Mubarak, and that Egyptian interlocutions this past week were unambiguously weighted in favor of Hamas.

The ultimate goal of Netanyahu's great Gaza adventure was of course to portray himself as the man of steel just in time for the January elections.

To what extent that goal was achieved will be made known then.

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