Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was photographed on his flight to the US earlier this week next to a hat bearing the slogan ‘total victory.’ Those two words somewhat obscure reality: Israel is yet to fully outline what would constitute victory in the currently three-front war (against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Ansar Allah (Houthis) in Yemen).
Netanyahu is hardly alone among politicians and statesmen in his preferring vagueness over specificity. Vagueness provides flexibility, and enables a variety of possible end states to be presented as an achievement. You do not have to subscribe to the view held by Netanyahu’s opponents, that the Prime Minister cares only about his own narrow political interest, to suspect that his lack of clarity is not accidental.
The combination of these three elements would together end the de facto Islamist sovereign area in Gaza
Nevertheless, an absence of clarity was one of the main factors which led to the disaster of 7 October.
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