Analysis: This Isn't Just Hypocrisy; It Is Active, Fervent Dishonesty | TOI - 4 Mar 2019 |

PM Netanyahu and ex-IDF chief Gantz together helped shape Israel's careful, arguably wise Gaza strategy, but it's hard to explain to a rocket-battered public, so they're blaming each other for it

A Likud campaign video released last month warned ominously that election opponent Benny Gantz is a "weak leftist." Another cautioned that he associates with those who would "hand the Gaza periphery to Hamas," and would even sit with Arab lawmaker Ahmad Tibi in an electoral bloc if he wins the April 9 election.

Gantz's campaign has responded with accusations no less startling in their vehemence -- and no less empty of substance. "Netanyahu," one Gantz campaign video said, "pays the Hamas murderers 15 million dollars. Every month. In cash. In exchange we got hundreds of rockets on the residents of the south, tens of thousands of dunams burned, hundreds of incendiary kites and balloons, tens of thousands of children in bomb shelters. We won't pay Hamas protection money."

A new kind of enemy

On August 25, 2014, the penultimate day of the 50-day Operation Protective Edge, a poll by Channel 2 found that just 38 percent of Israelis said they "supported" Netanyahu's handling of the war in Gaza. That was an abysmal showing, down 44 points from a high of 82% on July 23, a month earlier, which was in the second week of the war and just after the start of Israel's ground incursion into the Strip. The August 25 figure marked the nadir of a long decline -- on August 5, Netanyahu's approval was 63%. On August 21, 55%.

Force of resistance

During the 2006 Second Lebanon War, the influential Israeli analyst Ehud Yaari suggested calling the new strategy, advanced in that war by Hezbollah and subsequently by the Palestinian terror group Hamas, the "Muqawama Doctrine."

"The literal translation of the Arabic word muqawama is `resistance,' but that does not reflect the full meaning of the term. A more correct translation would be 'the doctrine of constant combat,' or 'persistent warfare,'" he wrote in November 2006.

CRS Report for Congress - Palestinian Elections (Feb 2009)