Benjamin Netanyahu: Is The Split With Lieberman The Beginning Of The End?

Benjamin Netanyahu is in trouble — politically speaking — as his coalition government begins to crumble.

It’s true that, as Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced on Monday that his party was ending its merger with Netanyahu’s Likud, he also said that his party would not be leaving the coalition. But, in Israeli politics, once a government gets into difficulties, the opposition parties smell the “blood in the water.” Indeed, Labour party leader Isaac Hertzog has already called on other parties to leave the coalition and join him in setting up an alternative government.

Some commentators have accused Lieberman of political opportunism, exploiting what he perceives as Netanyahu slowly losing support from his traditional power base in the right wing of his Likud party. Lieberman’s calculation is that in the event of an election, his party will have greater appeal to right wing voters who regard Netanyahu as weak in his responses to the actions of Hamas over the past few days.

“Differences between the prime minister and me have lately become substantial and fundamental,” Lieberman said at a news conference. The main difference currently is Netanyahu’s muted response to the literally hundreds of rockets fired into Israel by Hamas over he past few days.

It used to be that Israel pursued a policy of deterrence, meaning that the enemy would be frightened to attack Israel because it would fear the repercussions. Manifestly, that is no longer the case. Indeed, the roles are reversed, and it is Israel that now seems to be afraid if it acts too strongly.

It’s true that, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, including Israel’s supposed ally America, any response by Israel is automatically classified as “disproportional.” But the hundreds of rockets are not deemed equally disproportional when Hamas claim they are in retaliation for the death of one Arab youth.

A death which almost everyone in Israel, from the President down, has condemned in the strongest possible terms. A death, the perpetrators of which have been caught, have confessed, and will be tried for murder. The response of a civilized democratic state with, in the main, western values.

The amount of breast beating and self flagellation over the death of one boy, tragic as it may be, has reached hysterical levels in much of the Israeli media. The problem with those attitudes is that, should the current conflict escalate, there is no longer an acceptance of the concept of collateral damage.

Wars are won by the side having the determination to win at all costs. Repeat, at all costs. The modern day concept of “limited victory” does not stand the test of time. One only has to look at the U.S. record in Vietnam, now Iraq, and soon to be Afghanistan, to understand that there is no such thing as a limited victory.

Because Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be striving for just such a victory, he will fail, but the failure will be presented as a success.

Success is just a question of time frame. History will be the true judge.