A few days ago on the O'Reilly Factor, Dick Morris gave his theory for why violence has flared now. Morris believes that both sides are trying to exploit the election in Israel in February. In Israel, the more moderate Kadima party is facing off against the much more hard line Ben Netanyahu. Netanyahu strongly opposed the removal of settlements from Gaza, while it was the Kadima party that lead the effort, and events since have proven him right. On top of this, the embarrassing defeat of two plus years ago against Hezbollah have made Kadima very vulnerable. As such, Morris believes that Kadima is looking to assert itself before the election and show they are terror warriors on the scale of Netanyahu. From the perspective of Hamas, Morris believes that Hamas would like to do anything to avoid having Netanyahu as Prime Minister. If Netanyahu were Prime Minister, you could bet that Israeli troops would already be going house to house through Gaza in searching for militants. You can bet he wouldn't have cut off the war against Hezbollah early either.
If this is the case, both sides have made serious miscalculations. In order for Kadima to assert itself with the Israeli people, nothing short of total annihilation of Hamas will do. I don't believe that Kadima has the stomach for such an all out war. Such a war would require street to street, hand to hand, combat and I just don't believe that the leadership has the stomach for the deaths that would follow. They have already considered a truce and Olmert has told Bush privately that he would like a "sustainable truce" whatever that might mean.
From the perspective of Hamas, the only way to keep Netanyahu out of office now is for its own organization to be totally eliminated. If they see Netanyahu as an opponent they'd rather not face, then the last thing they would want to do is test his own internal opponents on the eve of an election. Now, they have caught themselves in a heads we lose tails they win situation. If they are to survive this war prior to the election, then that would all but guarantee Netanyahu getting election. Obviously, their own destruction is not an outcome they can afford. Even if the war was still continuing through the election, that's not an outcome they would like. If they are still facing war a month and a half from now it's likely that ground troops would be in Gaza. It would likely mean that current Israeli leadership is serious about their own destruction.
So, from the perspective of Israel, the war couldn't have been timed any better. Either Hamas will finally be finished off once and for all, or a leader will be installed that will make sure the next time they will.
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Hey Mike,
To me, Dick Morris' world revolves around political polls. It's too narrow a database from which to draw conclusions outside of politics. In this way he turns everything into matters of politics. In other words, he makes circular arguments.
Clearly the increase in rocket fire and rocket technology had to be addressed by Israel. The 'why', to me, has to do more with falling oil prices. Trace the price of oil during the course of this battle. Iran and Venezuela are approaching panic mode as oil revenues drop. And the surest way to increase oil prices is instability in the Middle East.
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