Netanyahu 1.4?

Good news from Israel has been in short supply, but here's some (Haaretz):

Tony Blair, the Quartet’s envoy to the Middle East, hailed Tuesday the Israeli cabinet’s expected approval of a plan to ease the blockade of the Gaza Strip and allow more aid into the territory as “a very important step.”

Israel gulled

There is no doubt that the Israelis set themselves up for a trap by boarding the Mavi Marmara, that they were  foolish in so doing, and that the botched and ill-advised raid has greatly damaged almost all of their foreign policy aims.

But a trap it most assuredly was -- deliberately laid, with planned results perhaps even more violent than those that transpired. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has had to walk back (hat tip Sullivan) exaggerated and credibility-eroding claims, such as that the passengers on board the Mavi Marmara who attacked the boarding Israelis were members of al Qaeda.  But elements at least of the IDF's narrative of the planning on board for a confrontation are probably true. Here are those claims as relayed by the Jerusalem Post (distilled and at slight variance from the IDF press release that originally made the al Qaeda claim):

Fred Kaplan nails it

Fred Kaplan has the definitive accounting of the full cost -- to Israel -- of the political and military incompetence of the assault on the Mavi Marmara:

Here is how Hamas' interests have been served so far:

• Under severe pressure, Egypt, which has blockaded Gaza by land for its own political reasons, has opened its borders (at least for now), a move that is likely to facilitate more weapons shipments than the most extreme estimates of potential smuggling from the Mavi Marmara would have supplied.
• Turkey, the only predominantly Muslim country that regards Israel as an ally, has recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv amid massive anti-Israeli protests in the streets of Istanbul.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was on his way to Washington to discuss the resumption of Palestinian peace talks with President Barack Obama, had to go home (for obvious reasons), and the prospect for renewed diplomacy—which had gained much support in the region—has, to say the least, diminished.