"...if Ambassador Meridor is taken at his word, then Israel has no strategy in Gaza..."

Abu Aardvark (Marc Lynch) now at the "new" FP, here

"...Meridor's narrative is assuredly familiar to anyone who follows the op-ed pages. He argued repeatedly that "this was not a matter of choice, not something we picked or were hoping for", but rather a war launched by Hamas to which Israel was forced to respond. Hamas must be understood as part of the global struggle against radical Islamic terrorism, he insisted, a war led by Iran ("the world's largest exporter of terror") and employing "sub- conventional weapons of mass destruction" (suicide bombers). The goal, he explained, was to create "a better, more secure situation for us and the Palestinians" by degrading Hamas's capabilities and by re-establishing the credibility of its deterrence.

But how, exactly? After he failed to respond to an initial question about the end-state Israel hoped to achieve, I asked him directly about his government's strategic logic. How, precisely did Israel's government expect its military campaign to achieve its goals? His answer tellingly focused almost exclusively on body counts and targets hit: over 1000 Hamas targets hit ("not a small number"), many headquarters and tunnels and rocket production facilities destroyed. Tactics over strategy..."