We are now inside Gaza. The story is just breaking, but a source I have in the national broadcast agency says he got word of the situation hours ago, with all national and private media instructed to sit on the story until now.
Like many Jews I'm sure, I'm crossing my fingers that the amount of death on both sides is minimal. But there is no question that we are now entering a new phase of this conflict, in which Hamas fighters are going to be able to kill or capture Israeli soldiers, possibly on a massive scale. That's a new dimension of the conflict with Hamas, and one that is going to have a complex impact on Israeli psyches.
What can we hope to gain from this operation? I maintain my earlier claim, that the only chance to achieve a positive result is through disarming Hamas, but leaving them in power. The New York Times reflects the more widely held belief that Israel doesn't know what it wants, nor does anyone else. I prefer to imagine an Israel that has some sense of purpose in this operation, and that is not operating out of a crass sense of pure political opportunism. But I've been wrong about Israel before.
I'm going to keep an eye on the headlines, but until we know exactly what the ground campaign objectives are I think I'll hold my comments.
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1 comments:
Max,
I think Israel knows what it wants like any other Democracy--essentially many different and often conflicting things. Therein lies the problem. The second edge to that double-edged sword that is democracy.
Hamas plays to the same weakness in Palestine, using populism and nationalism to their benefit, and recently using Democracy to gain political power as well.
I'm skeptical of the Israeli operation, but I do understand that there seems very little choice in the current situation. I sympathize with the very real, very difficult decisions that are being made, even if I disagree with them.
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