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By agreeing to Gaza ceasefire, PM showed why he is ‘King Bibi'
[Jpost] For his entire tenure, the knock on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been that he reflexively chooses the path of least resistance based exclusively on electoral calculations. Last week, the premier did the exact opposite by agreeing to a highly unpopular and potentially politically damaging ceasefire agreement with Hamas.For seven months, the Gaza Strip’s terrorist rulers have staged violent riots along the border; launched incendiary devices into southern Israel that have ravaged the surrounding ecosystem; and intermittently fired projectiles at innocent civilians living in adjacent communities, culminating in the largest-ever barrage in a 24-hour period of nearly 500 mortars and rockets. Nevertheless, and despite heavy pressure from within his coalition and the public at large, Netanyahu made the "tough" choice that many had concluded he was incapable of making. While the premier might be faulted for squandering four years of relative calm since the last major conflict with Hamas to devise a comprehensive strategy to cope with the threat, there are only two long-term options for dealing with Gaza: namely, taking unilateral measures to ease the blockade with a view to empowering people who might eventually choose life over Hamas’ radical Islamic ideology of which a core element is the death of the Jewish state; or to re-occupy Gaza and its two million hostile Palestinian inhabitants through military action that likely would result in hundreds of Israeli fatalities and perhaps thousands of casualties. Well, actually, there's a third option Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2018-11-22 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=528174 |