The continued large scale military action by Israel on the Gaza Strip is certainly not welcome news for the Obama administration. In an atmosphere where there are already enough urgent items on the menu between the economy, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, the possibility of having to deal with a crisis involving Israel and the Palestinians early on is not a pleasant prospect.
As others have pointed out, the overwhelming response to rockets launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel seem to reflect the Israelis taking advantage of the waning days of the Bush Administration, which has pretty much marched in lockstep with whatever military moves the Israelis have made over the last eight years no matter how destabilizing, including the ill-fated incursion into Lebanon. No doubt the attacks also reflect Israeli domestic politics as well, where the current Kadima-Labor coalition government is thought to be in jeopardy to the more hawkish Likud Party dominated coalition led by former prime minister Netanyahu in elections to be held in February 2009.
I have two small observations about the latest bloodletting. First, these kinds of escalations have simply never produced any kind of definitive results for the Israelis. Notwithstanding the sense of righteous bloodlust they arouse in some, the large scale bombing of densely populated urban areas from aircraft is the kind of thing that tends to exacerbate rather than defeat an insurgency or guerrilla campaign.
Second, these developments illustrate yet another area in which the Bush Administration has been a miserable failure. From its early days of deciding to ignore the Palestinians to its belated push to create some momentum in the peace process, virtually everything that Bush has done in the region has been, at best, ineffectual.
So yet one more fucked-up thing that Obama gets to inherit from Bush.