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Photo: AFP
Benjamin Netanyahu. Exposed by the Gaza war.
Photo: AFP
Sima Kadmon

No more Mr. Security

Op-ed: After he was unable to translate a failed war into a push for peace, and was exposed among the right as hesitant and undaring, Netanyahu needs to ask himself one vital question.

Anyone who claims that Hezbollah's attack on an Israel Defense Forces convoy was unexpected is either a fool or a liar – and who knows which is worse in this instance.

 

 

Just 10 days ago, a strike was carried out against a convoy of Hezbollah fighters that included the son of Imad Mughniyeh and an Iranian general and his entourage. According to foreign sources, Israel was behind the targeted-killing operation. Did anyone doubt that a response would follow? After all, Hezbollah officials spoke of one explicitly.

 

So what are we so surprised about – that they didn't wait for years this time and chose to serve their dish of revenge hot, that the response didn't come at some embassy in South America but in the form of an attack remarkably similar to the targeted killing itself?

 

IDF troops on alert on the northern border after the attack by Hezbollah (Photo: Avihu Shapira) (Photo: Avihu Shapira)
IDF troops on alert on the northern border after the attack by Hezbollah (Photo: Avihu Shapira)

 

The only surprising thing about the Hezbollah response was its carefully measured nature. It wasn't the action of someone who has lost his mind, but of someone who had carefully planned how not to spark a flare-up in the region, someone who has not lost all sense of proportion, as Avigdor Lieberman suggested we should do in response to the response.

 

All in all, it's time for us to come to terms with this ritual, which has been taking place in our region for so many years: We assassinate, target, neutralize or whatever we choose to call it, and they attack, respond, exact revenge or whatever they choose to call it.

 

The clock started ticking the day the targeted killing was carried out along the Syrian border. It's hard to believe that one or more of the decision-makers failed to foresee a response, and even one far more severe than actually took place.

 

Interestingly, none of the leaders, neither from the coalition nor from the opposition, stood up at the time to say that perhaps we should not have carried out the strike on the convoy, and that the price we would pay for the operation may far outweigh its benefits. Everyone toed the line, just as they did on the Wednesday following the Hezbollah response, just as they always do when it comes to matters of security.

 

Luckily for us, Hezbollah, which is up to its neck on other fronts, has no interest in igniting the region. This is probably why the response we witnessed on Wednesday was a precise and measured one. Needless to say, the incident could have been far worse. But make no mistake; it ain't over yet. The talk now in Israel and Lebanon is of "containment," but whether or not the Iranians are familiar with this concept remains to be seen.

 

When it comes to security issues, we tend to see them as playing into the hands of the prime minister. This held true prior to Operation Protective Edge. It may not do so now. Benjamin Netanyahu is no longer the same Mr. Security he once was, who managed for so long to keep things quiet.

 

The war in Gaza exposed him, especially among the right-wing public, as hesitant, undaring, apprehensive. Most of his support during Protective Edge came from the center and left-wing voters, those who aren't going to vote for him in any event. Back then, however, there was still hope that Netanyahu would leverage the war in Gaza to come to some kind of regional peace settlement, that he would take advantage of that bloody war to affect historical change in the region.

 

It didn’t happen, and Netanyahu has been left with a failed war and statements that are becoming more and more radical. At events and rallies at which Zionist Camp leaders Tzipi Livni and Isaac Herzog are appearing these days, Livni tells of how after the prime minister spoke at the press conference at the conclusion of the war of a political horizon, she presented him with a UN Security Council draft resolution on the demilitarization of Gaza and access for the Palestinian Authority through the crossings. Netanyahu rejected the proposal.

 

I could hardly believe my ears when Netanyahu spoke in Sderot this past week about Hamas having taken a hammering like never before. My thoughts went to the residents of Sderot who were standing there, to the residents of the Gaza border communities who can't sleep at night out of fear, and don’t even have the IDF to provide security there any longer.

  

I thought to myself: Who is Netanyahu kidding – us or himself?

 


פרסום ראשון: 02.01.15, 00:41
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