Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Many in Israel are not convinced the ceasefire is a good deal

Haviv Rettig Gur at the Times of Israel says that Netanyahu's popularity has taken a beating, and it's not because folks became war-weary, but rather because the IDF did not once and for all wipe Hamas out:

. . . his critics span the political spectrum. His most vocal critics are not in the opposition, but sit in his inner security cabinet – with Economy Minister Naftali Bennett slamming the prime minister’s ceasefire talks in Egypt as “negotiating with terrorists,” even as Bennett’s Jewish Home party saw its popularity rise by 50%, from 12 seats in the current Knesset to the equivalent of 18 seats in wartime opinion polls.
The day after the ceasefire, critics castigated the conduct of the operation from both sides. “In the next round, we must win,” insisted Jewish Home MK Yoni Chetboun.
“Quiet is always preferable to fire, but for God’s sake, we went through all this just to get back to the understandings from [2012’s Operation] Pillar of Defense?” lamented Labor whip Eitan Cabel.

He analyzes Bibi's reasons for putting this round in the history books:

Netanyahu did not set out on July 8 to uproot Hamas – for two reasons. First, he believes time is on Israel’s side. Hamas is mismanaging Gaza into economic and political oblivion (even those who blame Gaza’s dire condition squarely on Israel have trouble defending Hamas’s decision to drag Gaza’s economy and last open border into the Egyptian civil war, leading to the huge blow caused by the shuttering of that border over the past year). Hamas’s permanent belligerency also forms Exhibit A in Netanyahu’s explanations to the West as to why his security demands in the West Bank are so high.
Second, according to sources familiar with his thinking, Netanyahu believes, as do the IDF chief of staff, the defense minister and others in the Israeli security establishment, that the cost of the sort of military reconquest of Gaza required to root out Hamas is too high to be worthwhile. The IDF believes it could take years to “pacify” such a crowded, politically hostile territory, at the cost of hundreds of IDF dead and untold thousands of Palestinian dead, massive international opprobrium, and vast drains on the IDF’s manpower and financial resources that could limit its operational flexibility on other dangerous fronts, especially Syria-Lebanon and Iran.
Still, there is the matter of citizens' anticipation of final victory:

Netanyahu’s strategy has much to commend it. It recognizes and addresses the challenges posed by terrorism and irregular conflict – the civilian toll, the political traps, the importance of the psychological battlefield.
But it may suffer from one overwhelming flaw: in the minds of Israelis, it doesn’t look like war. It is hard to explain to millions of Israeli voters under rocket fire, to the families of dead children and dead soldiers, to a nation that expects decisive action from its leaders in wartime, why an enemy as derided and detested in the Israeli mind as Hamas can sustain rocket fire on a country as powerful as Israel for 50 days.
This gap is starting to have political consequences for Netanyahu. The growing chorus of critics, and the plummeting of Netanyahu’s approval rating, show the extent of the disparity between the government’s Gaza strategy and the nation’s expectations.


If there is a solid upside to the way this chapter is being concluded, it is that al-Sisi-era Egypt, a regime that seems to have a fairly decent head on its shoulders, has emerged as once again the power to be reckoned with in the eastern Mediterranean.  And Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, surely largely motivated by the undiminished strategic threat from Iran, is calling for the Islamic world to recognize Israel.  

So the Middle East's lone Western nation may enjoy more parties having its back than it has had in some time.  Not a bad situation to be in, given that Iran and its proxies still loom large, and that the alliance with post-America is pretty much worthless.

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