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| By Israel Insider staff April 18, 2008 |
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Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu told Israeli papers that the IDF knew exactly how to counter the violence in Gaza but was being stopped by "a failure of the political leadership." Instead, he said, the Olmert regime was trying to concoct a phony diplomatic deal with the Palestinians. Netanyahu said that the next election would be a referendum on the current government's machinations, and that he had no intention of honoring any such deal if he is elected.
Netanyahu told the Makor Rishon daily that his election would imply a public rejection of any such accord. If Olmert doesn't win, "then you cannot cynically and manipulatively force upon the people a move they do not want," Netanyahu said. Polls show that if elections were held today, Netanyahu would easily beat either Olmert and the Labor Party's chairman, Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
Earlier Olmert has therefore been suggesting a merger between the Knesset's two largest factions, Kadima and Labor, the Israeli daily Ma'ariv reported on Thursday. Olmert said he did "not rule out" such unification.
Planning for a summer war
The Jerusalem Post reported that according to assessments in Jerusalem, a major IDF incursion into the Gaza Strip to significantly weaken Hamas - similar to but likely to be more complex than Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank in 2002 - would not take place until at least a month after US President George W. Bush and other world leaders visit here in mid-May to celebrate Israel's 60th birthday. More to the point, it would be after the school year is over, prime time for what is hoped to be a limited but decisive operation to oust Hamas and hand over control either to Abbas, to the Egyptians or even to NATO.
Netanyahu said that handling "a terrorist enclave" was "not that difficult... The first thing is to deprive [the enemy] of sanctuary and the second is to increase the cost to the point of bringing down the regime. Change the rules of the game. It shouldn't be an incremental tit for tat -- that they kill a few of our people and we kill a few of theirs."
Asked whether what he meant by this was killing more Hamas people, he said: "I say we have to go from attrition to deterrence, and if necessary to bring down the regime -- and ultimately, I believe it will be necessary... there will be others who will rise to fill the vacuum. But we cannot tolerate the current situation. No country would suffer this."
If the Olmert government did not know how to stop the Gaza attacks, he urged, "let them clear the way for people who can do it a lot better. It's unacceptable what is happening in Gaza. The [government] might think this is the best possible government. Tell it to the residents of Ashkelon, Sderot, soon of Ashdod. Most Israelis understand this is unacceptable, and most [foreign] governments I talk to can't begin to fathom why Israel is not using the vast power it has to stop it."
Netanyahu lambasted the government's push for a "shelf agreement" with Abbas's Palestinian Authority that would be implemented only when conditions allowed. He said such an agreement risked giving "everything away" and would see the creation, after southern Lebanon and Gaza, of "a third Iranian base here."
He said the government was pretending that Abbas "has a supermarket and they could buy a product called 'Peace' on the shelf. In that supermarket, Israel pays in advance and gets nothing in return, but an Iranian base and more rockets and terror. The public is being told it's all or nothing. You either give everything away or give nothing away. Both courses are unwise and dangerous," he said.
He said the shelf agreement was being pursued not because of American government pressure, but because of the Olmert government's incompetence. "I don't think this American administration would lean on Israel to do something [that Israel] didn't intend to do in the first place," he said.
"The unilateral retreat from Lebanon [in 2000] immeasurably strengthened Hizbullah and produced an Iranian base north of the country, from which they launched 4,000 rockets [in 2006's Second Lebanon War]," he said. "That base is arming itself feverishly now, with 40,000 mostly Iranian missiles of greater range and payloads, which is almost three times what they had before the war.
"The same policy of unilateral retreat from Gaza that Olmert advocated produced the immeasurable strengthening of Hamas, leading them ultimately to overtake Gaza, giving them a second Iranian base, from which, since the disengagement, they fired 4,000 rockets as well. That base, too, is being armed feverishly, as we predicted," he went on. "These two failures should have made people stop in their tracks before they offered to make a third base here [in the West Bank], which is essentially what the government is doing." |
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