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Wednesday, February 04, 2009

MIDEAST: So What Was the Assault All About Analysis by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler

Just over a week before they go to the polls, Israelis are in a grim mood. The gloom is fed by the leading candidates, all of whom are seeking to outdo one another in sombre assessment of the challenges that lie ahead.

"We have nowhere to go but towards the next round of confrontation...after all, what are we preparing for if not the day of a disaster?" wrote columnist Doron Rosenblum in Haaretz, starkly capturing the national sentiment.

The perception that there's no political horizon to end the conflict with the Palestinians and the Arab world is hamstringing the efforts of the governing parties - centre-right Kadima and centre-left Labour - to challenge the confrontational mindset of the party that dominates the opinion polls, the Likud party and its far right acolytes.

"It doesn't matter," wrote Rosenblum, "if Bibi (Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud leader) wins the election, the 'Bibi agenda' has already won, and won big."

Since the fighting stopped two weeks ago, a daily trickle of Palestinian rockets into southern Israel surpassed on Sunday the average number of daily attacks before the war; the targets were also further afield (including the large Mediterranean city Ashkelon) than had been the case before Israeli launched its three-week offensive against Hamas.

In the public mind, deterrence, the main goal of the military assault, has been neutralised. A weekend poll on Channel 10 television showed parity between Israelis who believe the war was "a success" and those who felt it was not.

Even after their crushing attack on Hamas, most Israelis still feel themselves hostage on several fronts - to Hamas policies, to their own government's choices at election time and, to the national mindset that even management of the conflict with the Palestinians, much less its resolution, will be beyond the mandate of the government they are about to install.

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