If Islamic Jihad "has got the war it wished for," maybe its leaders should have remembered the old slogan: Be careful what you wish for, you may get it....

I don't agree that Israel is all tactics; the reality has been that circumstances have tended to dictate a strategy of restraint because no other strategy is really possible. Israel is, to state the obvious, small and constrained. Its options are more limited than those of the US, Russia or China.

In respect to Islamic Jihad and a ground war in Gaza, who is to say the Israelis will fight the last war? I would expect they've done a lot of training for urban warfare, building on their experiences in Jenin and in S. Lebanon, and they will use the technology of drones, night vision, and every army's tactic of overwhelming firepower. So Jihad may have in their Islamist dreams a fantasy of streets filled with dead Israeli soldiers but the reality may be very different.

As to longer term strategic effects, we see one right now, that Hizbollah for all its over-heated apocalyptic rhetoric is sitting on the sidelines, knowing that if they launch missiles at Israel they will win another pretend "victory" which destroys Lebanon and which forces them into direct conflict over their position in Lebanese society. This has strategic implications because the Arab states and their apologists have been shoveling about an idea that Israel "loses" all its wars. If that were so, Hizbollah would be attacking and so would Syria, but instead they're building deeper bunkers to protect their leaders from the IAF.

Finally, it's difficult to expect anything from the impotent Egyptian government but if some form of control is put over the border - meaning if Egypt cares more about stopping weapons than making $$ from smuggling - then we could see a real shift locally. This might even include "opening" the borders by having checkpoints manned by the PA on the Palestinian side.

the choices left with the Israel's 6 decades long occupation are dwindling. This evil empire built on idealogies of hatred and extreme religious beliefs are no longer practicable. This insane 60 years of wars, assasinations, conspiracies, toppling of governments and lastly US direct intervention to create a soft paddle around the Jewish terrorist state of Israel is now beginning to crack. The US tax payer can no longer afford to continue their support for such huge enterprise. So the insane attack with ruthlessness is a sign of hoplessness among the occupiers. They have foreseen the collapse of their eternal dream to a promised land with eternal enslavement of Arabs and are on rampage to avenge the eventuality.

The Arabs and the Jews have been fighting for 2000 years and maybe longer, why does anyone today think they have an answer? They do not.It has nothing to do with land or politics, that is a smoke screen,it is a religious war and these are never solved until one of two things are completed.The first being the complete destruction of one of the warring parties:The second being the conversion of one the parties to the others religious belief system.

The complex with Jews is that they have to follow their religions practice whatever circumstances may be. In the bible, they were induced with the idea that they have the right to own the land (CANAAN) till the EUPHRATES and TIGRIS rivers in Iraq. To fulfill this eternal dream the US is now in Iraq, but this eventuality has prolonged due to immense pressure on US tax payers and the recent economic chaos inflicting the whole world. Now that in such a scenario Israel has to accept the two state solution, it cannot afford to delay it longer. So the genocide in Gaza to reduce the POPULATION of Palestinians and bring it DOWN to that of Jews now in Israel. The Zionist will then bargain for more land on the logic that, look we Jews are more in number than the Palestinians, so we need more land. This will legitimise their OCCUPATION and increase SETTLEMENTS. This all offcourse with tacit approval from the US, until such it will stop only if their is something uneventful like the economic recession faced by US and the world.

This comment ties neatly in with Mark Lynch report from hearing the Israeli ambassador offering no long term strategic plan whatsoever. It seems to me that a lot of the basic fault of the Bush/Cheney/Israel axis has been a overestimation of kinetic solutions to basically social problems. Its still the remnants of the Rumsfeld SF-focused way of thinking.

By refusing to factor the humanitarian vectors (yet again) Israel now has failed to understand the complexity of modern warfare. Especially through their banning of journalists into the areas they have created a public scenario where "the whole world is watching", and unable to do anything. Wich causes outrage among all the folks who were so happy with Obamas presidency. The total lack of any long term planning being revealed, the whole image of a wounded beast reacting with extreme violence being conveyed through the medias, it just looks ugly.

P.S. To the other commenters: Please refrain from using the term "Jews" to designate the Israeli actors. It just looks fckin ugly and delegitimizes your arguments. Thanx.

Can you use any leverage - especially now that he's living in DC - to keep Abu Muqawama blogging? Maybe you can use the side advertisements on your FP blog to buy him unlimited supplies of the liquor of his choice? Be creative! - but above all, KEEP AM ALIVE!!!