-By Warner Todd Huston
It wasn’t long after the cease fire between Hamas and Israel was settled that political calculations by Israel’s leaders started up once again, signaling a return to political normalcy, if you will.
Election campaigning temporarily put on hold during the late conflagration was back in full force only minutes after the ceasefire took effect as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s opponents immediately began jockeying to replace him.
Israel’s news agencies reported that former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who resigned from office in 2008 over investigations into corruption, will likely sit out this election leaving the way clear for others to vie for leadership.
If Olmert steps out of the public eye, that might give Tzipi Livini a path back to politics. Livini, once an up and coming leader, resigned from the Knesset in May after a thorough defeat in her quest to continue as leader of the Kadima Party.
Livini warned that if PM Netanyahu didn’t immediately start peace talks with Hamas, the next confrontation would be worse. Livini also mocked Bibi for his own past comments made when she was leader of Kadima.
“Tzipi Livni and the Kadima government stopped the IDF before it finished the job,” Netanyahu said in January 2009. “We will continue the work. We will ensure that the Hamas reign of terror will collapse.”
Natanyahu is coming in for criticism from many sources for the bluster he indulged before becoming Prime Minister as he criticized former PMs and officials for their failures to curb Hamas and for his claims that he’d end the terror campaigns.
“Netanyahu misled millions of people into thinking he would stop the Hamas from firing at us,” Likud activist Eli Cornfeld said. “The prime minister cannot outsource our security to the president of Egypt who does not even want us to exist.”
The long knives are out for Netanyahu after this Hamas attack. It will be interesting to see if he can withstand these attacks from within.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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