Operation Pillar of Cloud proved once again that the government of Israel has no policy, in any area, on any subject. There is no goal, no long-term planning. There is adjustment to reality, there is putting out of fires. In the afternoon they adjust to what will happen in the evening, and at night they adjust to what will happen in the morning. When Netanyahu plans for the long term, he generally has in mind the 8 pm news broadcast. That's as far as he sees.
As in other areas, this time too, contrary to the promises of the ministerial troika, Israel did not subdue Hamas and did not deter it. All that remains now for Netanyahu, Barak and Liberman is to work out how to sell the ending of the operation to the public as an achievement, and to pray that the cease-fire is not breached before election day on January 22. After that, anything can happen.
In this situation, when they are struggling to drum up wide support for the move, the only possibility left for Netanyahu, Barak and Liberman is to find comfort in one another's arms. Whoever heard the statements by the threesome at last night's press conference certainly peeped out to see whether the messiah had come. For whomever rubbed his ears when Barak praised Liberman, there waited another surprise: a minute later Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor "Bomber" Liberman, the man who, when Egypt was ruled by a moderate president like Hosni Mubarak, threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam, got up and started to extol Egypt's current president, from the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Morsi. Who would have believed it?
Netanyahu is wont to boast, via press releases, of the number of "Likes" he gets on his Facebook page. He presumably will not send out a press release about the tens of thousands of surfers' responses following the ending of Operation Pillar of Cloud. The public's disappointment, as evidenced by the discussion on the prime minister's web page, adorned with words like "zero" and "loser", stems mainly from one thing. It is not clear whether expanding the operation would have been the right thing to do, and more effective than halting it at this point. It is also likely that Netanyahu had no choice but to give the cease-fire a chance. But if the threesome had not roared like lions and in the end capitulated like pussy cats, the public criticism would not have been so severe.
The threshold of expectations of Netanyahu and Liberman, who put toppling the rule of Hamas in the coalition agreement between Likud and Yisrael Beytenu, soared skywards like a Fajr 5. The two, who declared that deterrence had to be restored, that there could be no negotiations with Hamas, wailed and buckled. Even Liberman, the most credible of politicians, who boasted that with him his word was his word, who called on the government of Israel "to switch from talk to attack or resign" when the first Grad rocket fell on a shopping mall in Ashkelon in 2008, has turned out to be someone whose word lacks cover. And that is exactly how deterrence starts to fray. Now even Hamas understands that a government that lacks the courage to impose VAT on fruit and vegetables certainly lacks the courage to go into Gaza.
No-one should be surprised if Naftali Bennett, the new leader of the Habayit Hayehudi party, who is outflanking Netanyahu on the right, adopts Likud's 2006 slogan "Netanyahu is Strong against Hamas" with a slight change: "Netanyahu is Weak against Hamas". The slogan that reduced Netanyahu and Likud to twelve Knesset seats could lift Bennett and Habayit Hayehudi to at least that number.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 22, 2012
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