| Israel is a nation in love with the concept of "teaching enemies a lesson". In the 2006 war, Israel didn`t teach any lessons, but they did learn a very important one. The lesson was not to make public a list of goals to be accomplished in the war. In the Gaza invasion, Israel only stated one specific goal, (stop the rockets) and one vague goal (strike Hamas a blow). The success of the specific goal can be argued since Hamas did not stop the rockets until some time after Israel declared a unilateral truce. This makes it a Hamas decision and not an Israeli one, but still, the rockets are stopped for the moment. As for striking Hamas a blow, there is little doubt that this was done. The problem is that it wasn`t fatal or even particularly serious. In the end, Israels public goals for this war were very modest, and they can make some claim to have fulfilled them in the short term. The real winnder of the war will take some time to determine. This will be a real problem for Israel. |
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