Let’s see, election in Israel are on February 10th, Benjamin Netanyahu is currently the front runner, and his campaign promise is to have the neutralization of Iran’s nuclear program as his first order of business. AP
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s leading candidate for prime minister, said Saturday that Iran “will not be armed with a nuclear weapon.”
In an interview with Israel’s Channel 2 TV, Netanyahu said if elected prime minister his first mission will be to thwart the Iranian nuclear threat. Netanyahu, the current opposition leader and head of the hardline Likud party, called Iran the greatest danger to Israel and to all humanity.
When asked if stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions included a military strike, he replied: “It includes everything that is necessary to make this statement come true.”
The Channel 2 TV broadcast interviewed all three candidates for prime minister ahead of the Feb. 10 election. The three did not debate each other and appeared one after the other to answer questions posted by Israelis in YouTube videos.
Tzipi Livni of Kadima and Ehud Barak of Labor were both asked about how they intended to deal with the continuing rocket threat from Hamas militants in Gaza. Both took a hard line.
“Hamas was hit like it was never hit before,” Barak, the defense minister, said. “If they try us again, they will be hit again.”
Livni, the foreign minister, said if Hamas “hasn’t gotten the message yet” Israel would strike it again.
Regardless, she said Hamas could not be negotiated with and called on the people of Gaza to overthrow their regime.
“I do not intend to reach any agreements with Hamas. Agreements I make with people who accept my existence,” she said. “They do not recognize Israel and do not renounce violence and terrorism. They will not be a party to an agreement and therefore the people of Gaza have to expel the Hamas from within them.”
Contrast this with what happend under George Bush:
Israel gave serious thought this spring to launching a military strike on Iran’s nuclear sites but was told by President George W Bush that he would not support it and did not expect to revise that view for the rest of his presidency, senior European diplomatic sources have told the Guardian.
Of course it goes without saying that if Israel attacks Iran, Iran shall retaliate and we shall be back to the status quo of the 60s, 70s and 80s, when Palestine through groups like Hamas and the PLO engaged in low intensity warfare AKA global terrorism on a large scale.
Either way, what is particularly striking about this interview is not what was said, but what was not said. What all three candidates are implying is that unlike George Bush whose opinion they respected and whose blessing they required, when it comes to Barack Obama, as far as they are concerned, he is a political non-entity, President or not.
I guess Joe Biden’s promise that the US would be tested is slowly and steadily coming closer to actualization…
