You know when you get butterflies in your stomach,and there is nothing wrong YET, but feel something undesirable is about to happen,well that is how I feel about our Pres.-elect and Israel.
Yes we only have one President at a time,but nevertheless he could have said, "i support the President " on this matter. He did not.I did see on the bottom of the screen of 1 of the cable news shows,that he is "concerned re: civilian casualties", but I could not find the source of that.
The headline of Newsweek by Aaron Miller, "Get tough with Israel" follows an article by the magazine which advocates a shareing or international control of Jerusalem's Holy sites(Martin Indyk)tear down the barrier (Daniel Levy) NATO force in the West Bank later transfer land to the Palestinians (Gen James Jones)Israel take some responsibility for the NAKBA (Walter Russell Mead-in Foreign Affairs) -pretty much points to the direction of the old Clinton advisors-especially the Jewish ones.
Since Oslo,every Israeli concession, withdrawal or disengagement has energized and emboldened the forces thar seek to wipe Israel off the map.I was on a(Am Friends of) Likud phone conference today and Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon put it succintly,we have seen not land for peace ,but"land for rockets".
He pointed out,that he did not believe that Hezbollah is in a position to open a new front.
He reiterated that Israel wants no part of UN efforts in any proposed cease-fire,since the results in Lebanon did not turn out well to prevent the rearming of Hezbollah.
As far as Obama is concerned,he can only go so far without causing a major uproar in the pro-Israel Congress.However each statement ,or lack of one,and nuance will be watched.Luckily Israel probably needs another 10 days minimum to complete the military aspect of the assault.
The only downside of this effort,is the question ,can Israel politically turn around and take out Iran within 90 days if there is no diplomatic/economic progress?
