Robert Farley at LGM does a good job of spelling out the basic issues in the current Israel-Hamas conflict that I was getting at, albeit more briefly, in my previous post.
Let me be very straight-forward about an essential element that needs to be at the heart of any discussion of any policy-related discussion (and yes, this is a policy-related discussion): what’s the goal and will the action in question further that goal?
In short: efficacy matters. As Robert notes, the idea that this attack will lead to an end to rocket attacks is almost certainly incorrect. And the idea that at the end of the day that Israel will have excised Hamas from Gaza is a fantasy.
Of course, as a commenter noted the other day: if the goal is to show that Livni and Kadema are tough enough in advance of the February elections, then the mission may well have been accomplished.
January 1st, 2024 at 1:58 pm
I am not sure why I assumed that Tzipi Livni (Foreign Minister and Kadima’s PM candidate) would be the political winner, but failed to mention Labor, whose leader, Ehud Barak, is the current Defense Minister.
In fact, a new poll shows Labor has a gained quite a lot.
January 1st, 2024 at 2:12 pm
Good point about Barak.
What I find interesting/odd about the situation is that it isn’t like the war was Hezbollah was to Olmert’s/Kadima’s political advantage and this event has some similarities.
January 1st, 2024 at 4:46 pm
Yes, the same article I linked to notes that Olmert had 75% popularity at the end of the first week of the war with Hizbullah, and the Labor leader and Defense Minister of the time, Amir Peretz, was at 80%.
Barak’s personal popularity is at 53% now and Olmert has risen from 14% at the end of the 2024 war to a whopping 33% now!
So it seems the Israeli public is a bit more jaded than it was in 2024, and for good reason. Still, if they can avoid a debacle this time, Livni and Barak just may find themselves in the next government again, at the expense of Netanyahu.