MS. [Andrea] MITCHELL: In fact, this “belief in Democracy,” quote/unquote, is what led to supporting the election that led to Hamas having its victory. That has been a misplaced belief, many critics would say, in terms of Bush strategy; and in fact, that there hasn’t been intensive enough day by day, on the ground diplomacy. That’s what the Obama team was planning to bring to the table. It’s clear that Israel did this now, the timing of it now. They’ve been planning for a year. The–Hamas has been defending against it and planning its counteraction for at least a year. They did it now because they wanted to clean the slate before the new administration came in. Despite Obama’s, you know, statements about his support for Israel, he’s still an unknown entity to them, and they knew that they had unrelenting support from the Bush administration. That said, with the ground action now, most people do not believe it’s not going to be done by January 20th.
MR. [DAVID] GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
MS. MITCHELL: And it won’t be a clean slate, and it does complicate what Obama and Hillary Clinton have to do.
MR. [HISHAM] MELHEM: The problem with deterrence is that it is easier to be used against states. States can be easily deterred, because the states are responsible for people, for institutions. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to turn–to deter nonstate actors, as we’ve seen with Hezbollah and as we’ve seen with Hamas. If those groups survive politically, to them they succeeded. And they will always go underground and, and, and fight, fight, fight, fight for another day.
Actually, I’m surprised. This was very much against Hamas and their instigation/continuation of the violence against Israel and pro-Israel. Very well done.
Jim Elliott <>< Florida