Loyal reader and occasional commenter VFRMarine sent in a note about the presumptive Defense Minister in the new Netanyahu government. While there is a bit of inside baseball that not all of us will follow readily, what’s clear is that Mr Ya’alon favors a hard stance toward his more troublesome neighbors:
“Are you willing to give up the state of Israel for a prisoner?” Ya’alon asked. “The expression ‘at any price’ is not appropriate.”
He is also a known critic of accepting a cease-fire with Hamas. In a paper he wrote for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in September, he called for “intensive, medium-scale operations, and targeted killing of the [Hamas] leaders.”
This policy, he said, would get Hamas to “cry for a cease-fire without conditions.”
One can only hope.
Mazel tov to you, sir.
