Showing posts with label Daniel Levy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daniel Levy. Show all posts

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Does Netanyhau know whether Netanyahu has been "bluffing"?

Jeffrey Goldberg, who's been warning us for two years that Israel is likely to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, recently mused aloud whether Netanyahu might not have been bluffing all along -- threatening a strike to induce the U.S. and the world to ramp up economic pressure on Iran. That stirred some indignation, since Goldberg has projected a kind of mind meld with Netanyahu, relaying his purported thinking and motive in detail.  If he's been played, he's been a main conduit for the rest of us being played.  James Fallows, accordingly, in his genteel way, has challenged Goldberg (via blogalog) to make a judgment. What's his best guess now? Bluff or strike?  Would he like to reassess his past analyses in light of what he's recently learned?

When I read that challenge, I thought of what I'm learning now about the Israeli government's conduct of policy in the wake of the 1967 war -- at least as presented by Gershom Gorenberg in The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977. Then, an analogous question might have been posed: annexation or land-for-peace?  (There is a crucial difference, in that there was not a short-term clock running on that decision, but the analogy still holds to a degree.)  And Gorenberg's thesis is that the leadership -- Levi Eshkol in particular at the outset -- never decided: their de facto policy was not to decide.