As happened at the end of World War II, when wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill was replaced by Labor's Clement Atlee with his mostly domestic agenda, so it has been in Israel. For the moment, socio-economic and domestic issues have trumped security issues, and the desire for "conflict management" with the Palestinians has overshadowed any hope in the foreseeable future for "conflict resolution". It reflects growing Israeli despair over the prospects for a negotiated settlement.



This state of affairs will continue until a catastrophic terrorist attack leaves no alternative short of war. For now, however, social welfare reform has won the day and Israelis are content to maintain their current level of response based upon counter-insurgency, targeted assassinations and short-term incursions into the territories.



On the same day as the Israeli election (and for the first time), Palestinian terrorists fired a long-range Katyusha rocket from the Gaza Strip into Israel, thereby placing a much larger number of Israeli towns and villages within rocket range, including the city of Ashkelon. Gaza rockets are now closer to Tel Aviv than ever before. The implications of this are ominous. At the same time, the new Hamas cabinet headed by Ismail Haniyeh responded to the Kadima party's plan to set Israel's borders by declaring that the Palestinians would not accept any such borders and would never "give up one inch of Palestine."



There seems to be a serious "disconnect" in all this. While Israel (together with its Western allies) has called for peace plans, Road Maps, withdrawals, negotiations and concessions, just down the road, the new Hamas government is calling for genocide. While Israelis are calling for a two-state solution through a "unilateral withdrawal", Hamas is calling for a Final Solution and an Islamic state by "vanquishing the Zionist enemy."



President John F. Kennedy warned Americans in another war: "We dare not tempt them [the Soviets] with weakness." Following his death, Americans learned that lesson by "withdrawing" from Vietnam, Beirut and finally Mogadishu, Somalia.



In the Arab world, perception is everything. In the eyes of the Palestinians, any Israeli "withdrawal" is perceived as "victory". The election of Kadima in Israel and the reaffirmation of its failed policy of withdrawal (for whatever reasons it chooses to offer - in this case, setting Israel's borders for demographic reasons) has set the stage for yet another strategic blunder. It is the wrong policy, sought at the wrong time, with the wrong enemy and under the wrong circumstances.



We are told that those who do not learn the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them. Gaza should have demonstrated that withdrawal does not a peace make, unless an enemy is genuinely prepared to negotiate a settlement in good faith. A further "unilateral withdrawal" will perpetuate Israel's image in the eyes of its enemies as a country that can be broken.



So long as Hamas believes that Israel can be vanquished, there will never be a resolution of the conflict. So long as Israelis believe that this war can be "managed" and deny the necessity of vanquishing Hamas, the suicide bombers will continue to reap their deadly harvests and Palestinian schools will continue to reinforce the culture of martyrdom.



Hamas must be brought to the realization that its dream of conquest is futile; a lesson the Confederacy learned in the aftermath of the American Civil War, when it was forced by defeat to forgo slavery, and a lesson the Nazis learned in World War II when the Third Reich and its cult of Aryan supremacy died. To believe that this conflict can be "resolved" or even "managed" short of vanquishing Hamas is not only folly; it is contrary to the lessons of war.