Under these circumstances, it’s not surprising that Sharon feels as powerful as ever. He has a clear policy initiative, his unprecedented Gaza-plus “disengagement” plan. He is working to complete his coalition makeup with an Orthodox party, United Torah Judaism. Bringing it on board will give Israel some long-coveted political stability, at least for the coming year. (The 95-year-old rabbi who is the spiritual mentor of United Torah has still not decided whether to join the coalition.)

The big question, however, is how Sharon will use his power. Will “Gaza first” be also “Gaza last,” the end point of the post-Arafat political process? Or will Sharon take the next steps — further withdrawal from the West Bank and the establishment of a Palestinian state?

The old warrior remains ambiguous, leaving both options open. He recognizes Israel’s pressing need to relieve itself of the occupation of millions of Palestinians in the occupied territories, for demographic and political reasons. But it is far from clear whether he really intends to dismantle any large Israeli settlements in the West Bank — settlements of which he was the prime architect. For Sharon, who bitterly opposed the Oslo process, to sign off on a deal that essentially gives the Palestinians what Oslo and Camp David/Taba promised would be a shocking about-face. Yet it is highly unlikely that the Palestinians, whether led by Abu Mazen or anyone else, will accept anything less.

Those who doubt that Sharon intends to make serious concessions on the West Bank or over the status of East Jerusalem, another major point of contention, point to an extraordinarily candid interview given by Sharon’s chief advisor, Dov Weisglass, before Arafat died. In that interview, Weisglass acknowledged that Sharon’s disengagement plan was not part of a peace plan, but a way of avoiding any future political deal with the Palestinians. “The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that’s necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians … I found a device, in cooperation with the management of the world, to ensure that there will be no stopwatch here. That there will be no timetable to implement the settlers’ nightmare. I have postponed that nightmare indefinitely. Because what I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns.”

In the meantime, before any peace discussions can begin, Sharon is demanding that the new Palestinian leadership crack down on terrorism and incitement and reform its political, security and economic institutions. Of these, the chaotic security situation is the most pressing: Arafat allowed a bewildering variety of security forces to exist, making central control and accountability impossible. Sharon has recognized that the Palestinians need time to revamp their security forces.

The riddle of which way Sharon will go will probably not be resolved during 2005. The timetable for the Gaza settlement evacuation creates a buffer period for both Israeli and Palestinian leaders to deal with domestic issues before engaging in substantive negotiations. Abbas, who will almost certainly be elected as president of the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) on Jan. 9, needs to consolidate his power, achieve an understanding with the Islamic militant groups to halt terror attacks against Israelis, and extract supportive gestures from Israel. So far, Abu Mazen has made virtually no mistakes. He has kept his distance from America and Israel, quelled challengers within his mainstream Fatah movement, and repaired the Palestinians’ sour relations with key Arab states. Nevertheless, he failed to get the Hamas leadership to consent to a cease-fire, and he has yet to confront his security chiefs over redistributing their power.

During his presidential campaign, Abbas has, as expected, stuck to Arafat’s positions on the disputed issues with Israel. Unlike his late master, however, Abu Mazen is a firm believer in peaceful negotiations, rather than armed struggle, as the means to achieve Palestinian independence.

Sharon, who has known Abbas for decades, has responded positively to the Palestinian leadership change. He avoided giving Abu Mazen an embarrassing public hug, pledging only to meet whatever leader the Palestinians elect. He agreed to facilitate Palestinian elections (including in East Jerusalem, which Israel considers its sovereign territory) and proposed coordinating the Gaza withdrawal with the P.A. instead of going it alone, the original plan. Sharon is hoping to avoid an “evacuation under fire”; he wants to focus Israeli energy on dealing with the evacuated settlers, without having to simultaneously battle Palestinian militants. The ongoing fighting in Gaza, in which Israel has answered Palestinian mortar and rocket attacks on Israeli settlements with overwhelming power, shows the risks involved.

Sharon’s main challenge in 2005 will be dealing with the settlers’ opposition to the evacuation. For decades, the settlers have built Israel’s most effective political lobby, aided generously by Sharon in his various political capacities. Now he is turning against them. For the settlers, the battle is not only over the villages in the Gaza Strip, but also over the next stage. They want to deter the government from future evacuation of West Bank settlements, which lie at the core of their 37-year-old enterprise.

Having failed to topple Sharon’s government, or to call a national referendum over his Gaza plan, the settlers are politically isolated. Accordingly, they have turned to direct action. Some of their religious and political leaders have called on soldiers to disobey orders and resist the evacuation, even at the risk of imprisonment. The military fears that massive numbers of religious soldiers and officers will refuse to carry out evacuation orders. Field commanders who met with Sharon last week warned that settlers and their supporters are already preparing to fight the evacuation forces. Israel’s security service, the Shabak, fears an attempt on Sharon’s life, or a Jewish terrorist attack against the Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem.

Even if the pullout is eventually carried out relatively peacefully, without violent protests or a crisis of discipline in the army, it will undoubtedly be a traumatic event for Israelis. This will complicate the next stage in the process. The international community — the United States, European and Arab governments — expects Israel to follow its disengagement with a similar move in the West Bank. Sharon persuaded Bush not to pressure him until the Gaza plan was implemented. But Bush is not the only player involved: His European allies have made it clear that U.S. involvement in brokering a Palestinian-Israeli peace is the price for better transatlantic relations. This means pressing Sharon to take further steps. Washington has resisted those calls so far, merely using them as an example of the pressure that will be brought to bear on Israel if the Gaza plan is thwarted.

Sharon’s position is that the pullout is an autonomous Israeli decision, not linked to the internationally backed “road map” toward Palestinian independence and an end to the Israeli occupation. The road map’s first stage calls on the Palestinians to “immediately undertake an unconditional cessation of violence” and to begin reforming Palestinian institutions. The road map does not insist that all violence must immediately stop, rather that “Palestinians declare an unequivocal end to violence and terrorism and undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks on Israelis anywhere.” Sharon, however, is taking the position that a “complete cessation of terror, violence and incitement in deeds rather than words” is necessary before Israel will return to the road map, which has been effectively dead for many months. Under Arafat, this was mission impossible. But with a democratically elected Abbas in power, and a credible cease-fire in place, the P.A. could get a high grade for performance, throwing the ball back into Israel’s court.

Israelis know that their moment of truth will come after the disengagement. Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, one of Sharon’s confidants in the ruling Likud Party, said last week, “Sitting and doing nothing is not an option. Israel’s interest requires a disengagement on a wider scale than what will happen as part of the current disengagement plan.” Olmert’s remarks to the Jerusalem Post prompted a rebuttal from Sharon’s office, which asserted that there would be no second disengagement and that the only accepted plan is the roadmap. Interestingly, Sharon’s statement did not rule out withdrawal by agreement. This does not mean, however, that Sharon plans such a withdrawal, only that he wants to leave the door open for any scenario.

The debate over “the day after,” while still in its initial stage, threatens to tear apart the new coalition and lead Israelis to the polls in late 2005 or early 2006. There is logic in redrawing the political map following a historic turning point like the Gaza withdrawal. Labor is bound to demand further steps, while Likud leaders will resist them and urge caution. On the other hand, Sharon and Peres will try to hold their alliance together until the official Election Day in November 2006.

Bush has committed himself to Palestinian statehood during his second term but has avoided any pledge to “end the conflict” or reach a final Israeli-Palestinian deal. Elliott Abrams, Bush’s Middle East point man — who is rumored to be appointed special envoy to the region — told Jewish groups and think tanks that eventually, most West Bank settlements (those outside the main “blocks”) will be removed. Abrams rejected the “right of return” — the Palestinian demand that refugees who fled or were expelled from their homes in what is now Israel be allowed to return to them. The explosive Jerusalem issue would be deferred. This position corresponds to Bush’s controversial April 14 letter to Sharon, which accepted “Israeli population centers” (the blocks) in the territories as a fait accompli (Bush’s letter called them “new realities on the ground”) and rejected the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel.

The Israeli government views the Bush letter, which broke with the decades-long American and international position that the settlements are illegal, as a license to keep four settlement blocks that are home to about three-fourths of the settlers; these are adjacent to Israel’s population centers in the Tel Aviv area and Jerusalem. Sharon is working hard to establish more “new realities on the ground” in those places, through the erection of Israel’s security barrier and construction of new housing units. Faced with international censure, Israel has changed the barrier route. In many areas, it moved the fence to the pre-1967 Green Line dividing the West Bank and Israel. But in other areas, its route still encompasses the settlement blocks built on land Israel acquired after the 1967 war.

Its test will come soon, when Sharon presents for cabinet approval the new fence route in Gush Etzion, southeast of Jerusalem. It will include about 18,000 Palestinian villagers and Palestinian-owned lands, along with 10 Israeli settlements with 50,000 inhabitants. The government is planning a quid pro quo, taking this land in return for moving a large area in the southern West Bank to the barrier’s “Palestinian” side. Nevertheless, this de facto annexation of Palestinian land will pose a major test for Abbas, an outspoken critic of the Israeli wall, which he has declared an obstacle to peace. He will almost certainly oppose the Gush Etzion fence, which would create a large Israeli enclave between the Palestinian cities of Bethlehem and Hebron, along the West Bank’s main artery. It is also unclear whether the Israeli Supreme Court, which ordered the barrier route changed because of the hardship it imposed on Palestinians, will accept the new Gush Etzion plan.

Under American pressure, Sharon is deferring barrier construction around two other settlement blocks — Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim — which also slice up the future Palestinian state. Apparently, he will try to gain consent for fencing off these areas in return for other concessions. Meanwhile, the barrier is gradually becoming the de facto border, despite Israel’s official position regarding its “temporary, security-oriented” nature. The government applied for the financing of modern, high-tech terminals for Palestinian people and goods along the barrier. The World Bank agreed to look into it, provided that such terminals are located on the Green Line and not inside the West Bank. Clearly, such a project is reasonable only in the context of a long-term boundary, not some interim measure.

The future map of Israel is thus being drawn right now — by construction of the barrier and by the political decisions being taken. The situation recalls Ehud Barak’s proposals at the 2000 Camp David summit, shaped around the settlement blocks, which were rejected by Arafat as too modest to accommodate the Palestinians. Nothing is imminent, but any abandonment of West Bank settlements would certainly precipitate a domestic crisis in Israel, for which the Gaza evacuation is only the prelude.

Sharon has apparently not forsaken his decades-old plan to surround Palestinian enclaves (which critics deride as “Bantustans”) in the West Bank with Israeli settlements and “security zones.” His actions to date are still making that plan possible. At the same time, he has shown sensitivity to American opinion and an ability to change his mind — hence his willingness to construct the barrier despite his initial rejection of it, and his decision to leave the Gaza settlements shortly after declaring that they were as important to the Jewish state as Tel Aviv. But at the end of the day, what counts is political will and ability. Sharon’s disengagement from Gaza, even though only the prelude to the real play, may end up consuming Israel’s energy, throwing the country, and hopes for peace, into another hibernation.

That is why in Washington, London or Paris, governments must sweat to build political consensus for going to war, while in Jerusalem, war resolutions enjoy wide parliamentary support. Israeli governments find it hard to pass peace treaties through the Knesset. That’s where political difficulty lies.

Israel’s military operation against Hamas in Gaza, now in its 10th day, is an excellent example of this rule. The war enjoys strong public support among Israel’s Jewish majority. Only Israel’s Arabs, identifying with their Palestinian brothers, and the far political left, which is all but pacifist, have protested against it. All the rest have united behind the government, including the more established left. The novelist Amos Oz, a moral compass for Israel’s peace camp (and an eventual critic of the 2006 war in Lebanon), gave his blessing to the war.

Israelis believe that operation “Cast Lead” in Gaza is a justified war of no choice against an extremist, uncompromising enemy. Hamas and its smaller proxies have targeted Israel’s towns and villages near Gaza for several years with thousands of rockets and mortar bombs. They kept rocketing even after Ariel Sharon evacuated Israel’s settlements and forces from the Gaza strip in 2005. Lacking a credible response, or an anti-rocket technology, Israel appeared helpless against a primitive weapon, which killed relatively few people, but disrupted life for hundreds of thousands.

The common narrative here involves self-justification with insult. “No other country would have absorbed thousands of rockets on its territory without retaliation” is the way most Israelis analyze the situation. “We pulled out of Gaza, and they thanked us with shells and rockets” is another widely used explanation. Bombing and invading Gaza to “teach them a lesson” follows this logic naturally.

To its credit, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government has built its case for attacking Gaza, both domestically and internationally, by showing restraint for a long time and agreeing to a truce that lasted several months. Hamas, with its Islamist ideology and Iranian alliance, has very few friends. This explains the global support of Israel’s actions. There may be protests in the streets in Arab nations and European capitals, but note the lazy pace of diplomatic efforts to call a cease-fire. Egypt, which previously mediated between Israel and Hamas, and brokered the ill-fated truce, all but gave Israel a green light to crush Hamas. Only after the beginning of the ground offensive did Cairo express uneasiness.

Nevertheless, beyond its immediate political-military context, the current war serves a deeper need for Israelis: recovering from the trauma of our debacle in Lebanon in 2006. We grew to believe that our military is invincible, and whenever it fails to fulfill our expectations, we feel defenseless and doomed. The only way out of it is to go for another round and hope for better results. It is not a new idea, nor does it necessarily work: In 1982, leading the invasion of Lebanon, Prime Minister Menachem Begin boasted that it “cured the trauma of the Yom Kippur War” nine years before. As it happened, Begin’s operation soured, creating a new and lasting national trauma. But Israeli governments keep trying.

Gaza is Olmert’s second chance. The similarities are striking. As in 2006, Israel is fighting an Islamic group that grew from a small terrorist organization to a quasi-state, expelling Israeli forces from its territory in the process. In both cases, the enemy hit Israel’s population with rockets, and the Israel Defense Forces proved incapable of stopping it.

But here the analogy ends. In 2006, Israel went to war unprepared, didn’t know when to stop, and failed to defeat several hundred fighters of Hezbollah. Overall, it was an embarrassing show of military incompetence. This time, the military planned and practiced in advance. Its political masters have learned their lesson, and went by the checklist of the post-Lebanon commission of inquiry. This resulted in more modest goals, and in media shyness. And most important, the enemy is weaker this time, as evidenced by its smaller firepower. Unlike Hezbollah, which enjoyed the hilly terrain of Lebanon and open lines of supply via Syria, Hamas is encircled in the small enclave of Gaza, where Israel controls the gates. Egypt has kept the Rafah crossing, which connects it with Gaza, closed in order to prevent a spillover of Gaza’s troubles onto Egyptian territory.

The opening move of the Gaza operation, on Dec. 27, reminded Israelis of their glorious military past. War was in the air for several days, following the collapse of the truce, but everybody expected some ground incursion. Instead, Israel’s air force surprised by attacking dozens of targets simultaneously, killing hundreds of Palestinians in a matter of a few minutes. The military equated the attack with its most successful operation ever, the destruction of Egypt’s air force in the opening move of the 1967 Six Day War. The analogy is doubtful, as Hamas lacks any air defenses, but it shows the craving for success in the military.

The first day was exhilarating. Israelis saw the IDF as they want to remember it, smart, daring and vengeful. The subsequent and ongoing ground operation, launched after several days of hesitation, serves a similar psychological motive. The enemy ridiculed Israel for relying on its air power, fearing the inevitable casualties of ground war. The military wanted to smash this cowardly image.

How long will it last? Public support will wane if the number of casualties grows, or if the military is stuck in a pointless war of attrition. Or if something goes terribly wrong, as in Lebanon. The government would like to end the operation by next week, leaving a clean table for President Barack Obama. It hopes to make Hamas raise a white flag, by killing more of its fighting force. Bringing down Hamas’ rule in Gaza is beyond the scope of the current operation. Israel would like to see Hamas weakened, not destroyed. After all, given the state of Fatah, it’s the only power that can take care of Gaza with some responsibility. With Hamas gone, Israel might have to deal with a Somali-style cauldron of gangs and warlords.

This means that strategically, the Gaza war will probably end up as a blip, rather than as a historic turning point. It is another one of Israel’s long list of cross-border operations, rather than an effort to turn the tide on Islamic extremism. At best, Israel’s government hopes to scale back the rocket-launching capabilities of Hamas and weaken its military arm. This should lead to the sort of armed coexistence that Israel has with Hezbollah in the north. In other words, Israel is buying time.

Domestically, too, the war will hardly change the political reality. Israel went to war in the midst of an election campaign. Olmert, the prime minister, resigned under corruption allegations, and is not running for reelection. He only wants to repair his reputation from the Lebanon damage. His partners in the decision-making War Trio, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, are leading rival parties, Labor and Kadima, which compete for the center-left constituency. Billboards in Israel are showing the two, often side by side, with amazingly similar slogans (Barak is “looking at the truth” and Livni is “speaking the truth”). In the first week of the war, Barak gained support in the polls, but he is still lagging behind as an aspiring national leader. Even if the Gaza ground operation ends in some glorious victory, it will probably be too late for Barak to change the national sentiment before the Feb. 10 election.

Given the division on the left, the election front-runner remains Binyamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud party. As opposition leader, Bibi is out of the decisions loop, serving instead as a TV propagandist for Israel. Nevertheless, he can use the war to his advantage, arguing that Olmert et al. were merely following his advice. The polls indicate, however, that the war may enable the left to prevent a right-wing majority in the Knesset. This means that Israel’s next government will probably be a right-center one, in which Netanyahu shares power with Barak, or Livni, or both.

How will all this affect Obama’s expected effort to reenergize the Israeli-Palestinian peace process? On one hand, the Gaza war is showing that Israel can stand up to its enemies, thus strengthening national self-confidence. Alas, the war has also shown that there is no credible way to stop rockets, as Hamas has launched them deeper into Israeli territory than ever before. At this backdrop, it will be difficult to build public support for a West Bank withdrawal. Israelis will be even more reluctant to expose Tel Aviv and the Ben Gurion airport to the possibility of rocket fire from the West Bank. The new American president will have to work hard to overcome this fear. Otherwise, Israelis will still find it easier to go to war than to wage peace.

Obama’s itinerary included much of the usual for high-level foreign VIPs: visiting the Holocaust Memorial and the Western Wall in Jerusalem, calling on President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and making a quick visit to the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. He also took a helicopter trip to Sderot, the border town near Gaza that has been hit by thousands of Palestinian rockets in recent years. Now Sderot is quiet, thanks to a cease-fire with Hamas, but Obama had his own near encounter with local terrorism. Several hours before his arrival on Tuesday, a Palestinian bulldozer operator ran over passersby near Obama’s hotel in Jerusalem. Two dozen people were wounded before the perpetrator was shot and killed.

As expected, Obama has said all the right things in terms of what the Israeli establishment wants to hear. Like any other American politician, he repeated his commitment to Israel’s security and its special relationship with the United States, condemned terrorism, and pledged to prevent the Iranian nuclear threat. But while acknowledging his charm, his Israeli interlocutors seem to sense that Obama is not proficient in the nitty-gritty of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking and does not expect any quick breakthrough toward peace. Clearly, he has more pressing issues on his foreign policy agenda; Israel’s problems are way down his list, after Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and the economy and energy reform back home.

Nevertheless, Obama’s high-profile visit here is no accident. Israel has played an arguably overblown role in the 2008 campaign, as Obama’s rivals have sought to push falsehoods about his “Muslim background” (he is Christian) and his associations with known anti-Israel figures to scare away Jewish voters and other supporters. This tactic appears to have been effective. In many meetings with Jewish American visitors this year, I have heard strong doubts about voting for Obama in November. “I have never supported a Republican, but this time it’s different,” was a recurring theme I heard. “I have a dilemma,” confided one young Jewish financier from New York. “McCain is more pro-Israel than Obama, but he will appoint conservatives to the Supreme Court, who may overturn Roe v. Wade.” A tough choice for some, undoubtedly.

Mindful of the possible defection of Jewish voters to McCain, Obama’s campaign has been at pains to convince the U.S. electorate that he is genuinely pro-Israel. He was pushing his message to the limits of political correctness when in June he announced his support for an “undivided Jerusalem” at the annual gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington. In the charged lingo of the conflict, this term is anathema to the Palestinians, and Obama backed away from it the next day. But he kept courting Israel (as well as American supporters) by writing an Op-Ed in Israel’s largest newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, for the country’s 60th anniversary. He even deemed appropriate Israel’s bombing last year of Syria’s suspected nuclear reactor — you can’t really go much further than that as a Democrat who campaigned on his opposition to the Iraq war.

Despite all the excitement and commentary this week, an intriguing question lingers here: Which candidate would be better for Israel? Taking into account that campaigning is not synonymous with political reality, there are several possible answers to this question.

Instinctively, the Israeli establishment is warmer to McCain. His gray hair, wrinkles and combat record are key elements of the Israeli concept of leadership. Think of David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Rabin or Ariel Sharon. We tend to be suspicious of young, TV-savvy leaders without experience in matters of war and peace, and prefer the tribal elders. Moreover, McCain appears to be more receptive to using force, which is the usual point of contention between Israeli and Western public opinion. For these reasons, he appears like a good uncle, a follow-up to Bush’s supportive eight years.

Obama offers a more exciting — albeit more challenging — vision to Israelis. If he can bring about a change of perception that America is once again optimistic in its strength, more accepted in the world and less dependent on oil, it would boost Israel’s strategic position. But in order to get there, Obama wants — and needs — to be friendlier with the Europeans, Arabs and Iranians, all of whom are less friendly to Israel in various degrees. The inference, then, is that an Obama administration would pressure Israel to change its behavior and withdraw from the occupied territories and the settlements. To Israel’s right wing, this amounts to an unacceptable sellout. To the left, it’s fulfilling the old dream of “strong American intervention” to impose peace.

What will Obama actually do in this region, if elected? He (and perhaps even McCain) will likely try to appear more involved in Israeli-Arab peacemaking, if only to show a change from the Bush years. Dennis Ross and Daniel Kurtzer, veterans of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, are part of Obama’s entourage for this visit. Both are known supporters of active American mediation in the Middle East. But realistically, they have little room to maneuver. If they seek a potential agreement quickly under a next administration, they might try the Syrian track first. If they want to show compassion to the Palestinians, which could give America more credit across the Middle East and elsewhere abroad, they risk the usual long and frustrating path.

Ultimately, many Israelis see little difference between American presidents in terms of the U.S. relationship with Israel. Over and above personal chemistry, U.S. policy has tended to follow a basic set of rules: Whenever a key American interest is at stake — say, when Israel is selling arms to China — then declarations of close friendship are set aside and brutal arm-twisting is applied until Israel falls into line. If a vital Israeli interest is involved — as in, say, the Palestinian issue, American military aid, or Israel’s nuclear deterrent — then Washington tends to follow Jerusalem’s lead. When any issue falls in between, like the Iranian question, there is some give and take, but the American side essentially has the final word. Note how the Bush administration decided to talk to the Iranians recently, shattering Israeli hopes (or illusions) of an impending U.S. military attack.

This is why Israelis in general pay relatively little attention to the American campaign, and why, once the traveling Obama show moves on, the excitement will dissipate. Few here who aren’t politics buffs see much difference between Democrats and Republicans, or understand the subtleties of congressional vs. presidential power. And pre-election expectations tend to be wrong: Neither Bill Clinton or George W. Bush were favorites of Israel’s leaders, although both turned out to be among the friendliest presidents ever to Israel. This time, too, despite all the media attention and commentary, we will have to wait until after Election Day to really find out what lies ahead, even if the next U.S. president is the candidate who brought his historic campaign to our shores this week.

“The Arabs,” as they were called then, manned our country’s service sector for two decades after Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in June 1967. But lacking civil or political rights, this underclass rebelled in December 1987. Termed the first intifada, the Palestinian uprising abruptly changed Israel’s reality. Palestinian workers disappeared from sight, first the young ones, then the elders.

Born a few months after the outbreak of the first intifada, my daughter grew up in a very different environment than I did. She has never met a Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza. Now 19, she has seen our Palestinian neighbors only on TV, and views them as aliens. She is much more familiar with American brand names and sitcom characters than with the people who live 15 miles east of her Tel Aviv home.

My daughter is far from alone in her experience. Today’s mainstream Israelis living comfortably in the Tel Aviv area hardly ever cross the “Green Line” separating Israel from the West Bank. In pre-intifada times, many Israelis traveled the short distance up the hills to buy cheap furniture at Bidyah or get their cars fixed in low-cost workshops in Jenin. Not anymore. Since the much bloodier second intifada erupted in September 2000, all Palestinian towns and villages are legally off-limits to Israelis. Moreover, few Israelis would even visit the controversial Israeli settlements on the hilltops. (Conversely, their religious, highly ideological inhabitants would feel out of place in Tel Aviv, just like Palestinians would.) Now, the only reason to go to Nablus or Ramallah, or to one of the Israeli settlements around them, would be for military duty. Otherwise, entering these towns is a life-threatening prospect for Israelis.

Even the Old City of Jerusalem, officially a sovereign part of Israel, has lost its appeal for most Israelis. As a child and teenager, I toured the Old City’s alleys, the souk and holy places countless times with my family, my classmates and my friends. We would walk on top of the Ottoman-built wall, or eat hummus at Abu Shukri and have tea down the alley in the Christian Quarter. Imagine visiting one of the world’s most exotic wonders, within an hour’s drive from home! But few Israelis who grew up in the post-intifada reality would even recognize these places now. These days, I visit the souk only when I have visitors from abroad. For many of my peers in Tel Aviv, the Old City is more remote than New York, London or Thailand. For them, the Jewish part of the city suffices. They see East Jerusalem, with its Palestinian dwellers, as too scary and alien to visit.

The truth is, the popular divorce that has hardened in place between Israelis and Palestinians has an acute political meaning. If you don’t ever go to the West Bank or Gaza except for military duty, then for all practical purposes those places lie across the border. Official state or not — it doesn’t matter. Only diehard leftists and peace process buffs here still talk about “the occupation.” The majority of Israelis, who never witness its ugly expressions — the checkpoints, the travel bans, the house demolitions — hardly bother to think about the occupation anymore.

This political parallax explains a paradox with Israeli public opinion. Polling data indicate strong support among Israelis for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Yet, this majority support has not translated into action. The last three Israeli prime ministers — Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon and the incumbent Ehud Olmert — have declared that Palestinian statehood is in Israel’s interest. In reality, however, its establishment appears as remote as ever. The West Bank is ruled by an ad hoc hybrid: Israeli security forces, who also control the external borders; Israeli settlers and their municipal organs; the dysfunctional Palestinian Authority, which delivers civilian services; and Palestinian terrorist groups. Gaza is now controlled by Hamas, but with Israel essentially controlling basic services like food and electricity. It’s a complicated mishmash, a patchwork of authorities and responsibilities. But, as destitute as parts of the Palestinian areas now are, to most Israelis the situation appears to be working somehow.

From the perspective of most Israelis, then, “if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.” Supporting Palestinian statehood in principle, and voting for it in public opinion polls, cost nothing. But why bother paying the costs of actually implementing the two-state solution if it already exists de facto? An Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, a prerequisite for a Palestinian state there, mandates the relocation of tens of thousands of resistant settlers, who could disrupt public order and even turn to violence. It also means that the Israeli military would have to cede control of hills overlooking Israeli population centers and an international airport, exposing them to Palestinian militants’ rocket fire and suicide bombers.

Under these circumstances, changing the status quo is hardly appealing, for better or for worse.

The detachment of Israelis from the occupied territories has not been only a voluntary reaction to Palestinian anger, violence and deadly terrorist attacks. It has been a deliberate government effort. In the past 15 years, all Israeli governments have implemented a policy of “separation,” aimed at distancing and shielding the bulk of Israeli society from the unpleasant reality beyond the Green Line.

On May 24, 1992, Fouad el-Umarin, an 18-year-old Palestinian from Gaza, attacked Helena Rapp, a 15-year-old Israeli student on her way to school in Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv, stabbing her to death. At the time, Israel was only weeks away from a crucial election, in which Labor leader Yitzhak Rabin challenged the incumbent prime minister, Likud leader Yitzhak Shamir. Rabin pledged to create Palestinian “autonomy” in the West Bank and Gaza, while Shamir, the last believer in Greater Israel, favored keeping the territories under full Israeli occupation. His idea of responding to the first intifada was to build more Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The murder of Helena Rapp was followed by three days of violent anti-Palestinian protest in Bat Yam. Mobs destroyed property and beat passersby who looked like Arabs. This gave the Rabin campaign an ace card. “We should take Gaza out of Tel Aviv,” declared the former military leader, who held the respect of Israelis as “Mr. Security.”

By August 1993, the newly elected Rabin signed the Oslo agreement with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The Palestinian Authority, under Arafat’s leadership, was formed in Gaza and parts of the West Bank, while Israel kept its overriding responsibility for security, including for the Jewish settlements there. Hamas, which opposed the peace process, launched a wave of terror — first with knives and then with human bombs.

Rabin’s response was to accelerate the separation process. Even before Oslo, his government declared a “full closure,” forbidding Palestinians from entering Israel and working there. Then it built special roads for the Jewish settlers, saving them the unpleasant and increasingly dangerous drive through neighboring Palestinian towns. (In later years, Israel created two entirely separate road systems in the West Bank, forbidding Palestinians from using the “Israeli” roads.) A fence was built around the Gaza Strip, isolating it from Israel, which still kept more than 20 Israeli settlements on its other side.

These measures turned out to be irreversible. In a key shift, Israel began importing workers from Thailand, Romania and China to replace the Palestinians in the fields and on the scaffoldings. Independent from Palestinian labor, and more accepted globally, thanks to the Oslo peace process, Israel’s economy geared itself rapidly toward the West and the new markets opened to it in Asia and the former Soviet Bloc. Its remaining ties with the dwindling Palestinian economy involved exports of basic products and services.

A second round of separation occurred under the leadership of Ariel Sharon, who took office in 2001. Sharon was a political pariah for many years, but his election was the response of angry and threatened Israelis to the collapse of the peace process and to the second intifada, which, unlike the angry stone throwing of the first one, exploded with weapons and suicide bombings. It was a first-rate historic irony that Sharon, an architect of the settlement project and Israel’s long-term hold over the occupied territories, did more than his peers to scale it back. Facing the worst wave of suicide bombings in 2002, Sharon grudgingly agreed to build a security barrier to separate Israel from the West Bank. While its route, leaving about one-tenth of West Bank territory on the western, Israeli side remains controversial outside Israel, most Israelis view “the fence” as a blessing. Its construction coincided with a marked reduction in suicide bombings, which gave Israelis a renewed sense of security. More important, it created a physical division between the two sides. As it approaches completion today, it becomes increasingly impossible simply to cross the hills to the West Bank or vice versa.

In 2005, Sharon carried out his most daring endeavor, the “disengagement” from Gaza. He ordered the removal of all Israeli settlements and military posts, withdrawing to the pre-1967 line. While this move was supported by a majority of Israelis at the time, many had second thoughts later, when the evacuated area turned into a bastion of Hamas supporters and a basis for rocket attacks against Israeli border towns and villages. Nevertheless, the disengagement sealed Gaza behind high fences, and in the past two years, Israel has sought to cut its remaining ties and responsibilities there. The government declared Gaza “a hostile entity” and marked the crossings as border points.

The ever-increasing separation measures, the economic independence from the Palestinians and above all the physical barriers have isolated Israelis like never before from the “other side.” This has enabled Israel to flourish as a first-world, Western wannabe, an enclave in the heart of an otherwise largely stagnant Arab world.

But this situation comes with a price. While allowing Israelis to ignore their unfriendly neighborhood, and live under the illusion that their country exists somewhere in Europe or North America, the status quo reduces Israelis’ motivation to seek compromise and peace with the Palestinians. To observers of the Palestinians’ deteriorating situation in the occupied territories, that symptom of Israeli denial can appear morally repugnant. And as the destitution in those areas mounts, the status quo is not likely to be sustainable — a deeper chaos could erupt and become a much greater problem for Israel’s government and people.

Perhaps most significant, the hardened status quo hinders the Jewish state’s eventual acceptance in the Middle East, already a difficult goal. When Iran and its proxies aim to undermine the legitimacy of Israel, and even actively pursue its destruction, self-imposed isolation by Israel may be one of the biggest dangers of all.

Strategically, the Gaza takeover marked a clear victory for Iran and its allies in the Arab world, and another setback for the pro-American, moderate Arab nations willing to compromise with Israel. After winning the Palestinian parliamentary election in January 2006, Hamas grew ever stronger in the Gaza Strip as violence increased between Hamas and Fatah. Under Saudi pressure, both factions eventually agreed to form a “unity government,” but it couldn’t hold. Violence resumed, and Hamas proved itself a more effective force than Fatah, whose commanders fled Gaza, leaving their soldiers alone in the final battle, which lasted barely three days.

From the Israeli perspective, less than a year after the Israeli Defense Forces failed to defeat Hezbollah and its allies in Lebanon, the Hamas takeover in Gaza is a disaster. And for the Bush administration, preoccupied with the quagmire in Iraq, Gaza marks another failure in the Middle East. The White House forced Israel to allow Hamas’ participation in last year’s election, thus legitimizing Hamas’ political role, but the strategy backfired with Hamas’ decisive victory. Faced with the disappointing outcome, U.S. and Israeli officials sought to “isolate the extremists and strengthen the moderates” through a diplomatic and economic boycott of Hamas, and by pledging further support for Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, who kept his position as the president of the weakened Palestinian Authority. But even despite European support for this policy, Hamas withstood all pressure to recognize Israel’s right to exist, renounce terror and abide by past Israeli-Palestinian agreements. At the same time, Israel’s willingness to help Abbas was at best half-hearted. It never went beyond token moves and empty gestures, usually citing security concerns, domestic political problems or Abbas’ weakness.

U.S. and Israeli leaders scrambled to spin the new reality in Gaza favorably. Instead of mourning Abbas’ clear defeat, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke of “a new opportunity,” as if a good thing had happened. U.S. and European governments were quick to lift the boycott on the Palestinian Authority and resume foreign aid, while Israel pledged to follow suit and release frozen Palestinian tax revenues. On Tuesday, Olmert visited President Bush at the White House, and as always, both committed themselves to the elusive “two-state solution” for Israel and Palestine. Olmert pledged to make “every possible effort” to cooperate with Abbas, while Bush vowed to strengthen Abbas and Salam Fayyad, the hastily appointed Fatah prime minister in the West Bank, whom Bush called “a good fellow.” Speaking to reporters at the Oval Office, Olmert said, “I’m absolutely determined that there is an opportunity,” and pledged to supply the conditions for a Palestinian state. Bush again spoke of an “ideological conflict” between moderates and extremists, tying together Iraq, Lebanon and Abbas in a fledgling web of democracy.

It was hard to believe. Only days ago, Abbas was seen as a hopeless weakling who could offer little beyond nice words. Israeli officials showed respect for Abbas’ stated anti-terrorist position but failed to persuade him to confront Hamas and opposed any efforts to accommodate the militants. Even within Fatah, Abbas has had only limited authority. Lacking the charisma and public admiration of his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, the soft-spoken Abbas could not rein in the many offshoots and private armies that spun off from Fatah. And he has only been further diminished by the humiliating defeat in Gaza at the hands of the smaller but more disciplined Hamas force.

Even the remaining few in Israel’s “peace camp” have little faith in Abbas. One prominent leader of the political left, who has a long history of talking to Palestinian leaders, told me recently that Israel should still work to negotiate a draft peace agreement with Abbas — even knowing full well that he will not be able to implement it. “It’s important for Israel’s legitimacy,” the Israeli leader said. Realistically, the Bush White House has long shared the view of Abbas as an ineffective leader, but it had no alternative Palestinian leader to back — hence its continued support for Abbas.

Their doubts and disappointment notwithstanding, both Bush and Olmert have an interest in casting Abbas and the situation in Gaza in a positive light. Olmert, in particular, is trying to recover from his unpopularity at home. His trip to Washington has been part of a comeback effort, following the devastating report of a Commission of Inquiry over his decision to launch the war in Lebanon last year and his conduct of it. Last week, Olmert enjoyed two rare moments of relief: His old friend, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, won the Labor Party primary and joined Olmert’s cabinet as defense minister. A day later, Israeli elder statesman Shimon Peres, a political ally of Olmert’s, was elected to the titular job of Israel’s state president. Bush played his part by praising Olmert’s “strong leadership,” but the events in Gaza threaten to undermine Olmert’s rehabilitated image.

Prior to Olmert’s Washington trip, U.S. and Israeli policies toward the Palestinians did not appear to be in a state of harmony. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has framed Palestinian independence and statehood as a moral issue that is in the United States’ interest, was pushing for a “political horizon” — namely, an Israeli commitment to a future West Bank withdrawal to facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state. Olmert reluctantly agreed to discuss it with Abbas. The American advisor to the Palestinian Authority, three-star General Keith Dayton, believed that Abbas’ loyal forces in Gaza could be developed and become effective in maintaining security, and that Israel could therefore ease movement restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank. But Israel’s security establishment dismissed Dayton’s plan as a fairy tale, revealing their disbelief in the strength of Fatah. Now they are saying, “We told you so.”

Though Israel never put this forth as its official policy, it has long sought to isolate the two geographically separate parts of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza. The Hamas takeover has deepened that separation, through the de facto creation of two different entities: “Hamastan” in Gaza, where there are no longer any Israelis, but where Israel controls the borders, sea and air space; and “Fatahstan” in the West Bank, where Abbas has limited control over several Palestinian enclaves, surrounded by Israeli settlements and roads, and the Israeli Defense Forces control overall security. The complexity and absurdity of the developing scenario can be seen in this prospect: Hamas controls Gaza from the inside, vowing to destroy Israel, but remains at Israel’s mercy when it comes to supplies of electricity, water, food and other basics needed for the dense and beleaguered population.

Olmert and Bush now pledge to support and promote the West Bank “moderates,” and prove to the Gaza “extremists” that moderation pays off. But this policy of separate treatment is unlikely to succeed. Hamas and its regional allies are not going to sit still and wait for Israel and the United States to overthrow them. Moreover, following recent rocket attacks on Israel’s territory from Lebanon and Gaza — two areas from which Israel has evacuated — another West Bank withdrawal appears, essentially, out of the question. Israelis would not want their population centers and one international airport to be attacked, and given Olmert’s precarious political stature, he will not risk his coalition with a withdrawal plan that would alienate his right-wing coalition partners. Between Olmert’s narrow maneuvering room and Abbas’ chronic weakness, any possibility of Palestinian statehood in the foreseeable future is beyond belief.

Hamas also faces a formidable challenge. Killing off adversaries, taking over their headquarters and looting their homes are easier tasks than feeding 1.5 million people. Religious zeal and militia discipline are not enough, and Hamas will next have to find a modus vivendi with Israel. In the aftermath of its victory in Gaza, Hamas focused on consolidating its hold on power rather than rocketing Israeli towns and villages — but there is no stable cease-fire. Hamas may well try to provoke an Israeli military response that could unify the Palestinians against their occupiers once again.

The situation remains combustible. Israel will try to blockade and contain Gaza while trying to shore up Abbas and Fatah in the West Bank. And there is little appetite to invade Gaza among Israel’s national security establishment. But another wave of rockets or suicide attacks by Hamas might push Israel into another major operation. Meanwhile, Israel now has to contend with hundreds of Fatah supporters and their families who fled to the border crossing, pleading for Israeli permission to move to the West Bank. If not properly cared for, this pressing exodus from Gaza may turn into another refugee problem, one of many facets of a deepening crisis in the region.

The severe criticisms about his leadership and Olmert’s refusal to resign are, of course, making headlines in Israel. But the Winograd Commission did not criticize only the top leaders and their decision-making process. It criticized the very logic of going to war at all, without proper goals, and without sufficient operational plans and training. It cast serious doubts on the Israeli reflex of retaliation and reliance on military force.

Ironically, a key problem, according to the commission, was the perception that such wars were no longer necessary. In a carefully worded statement, the commission found that many in Israel’s political-military establishment believe wrongly that the “era of wars is over” — that Israel is strong enough to deter its adversaries and will never need to go to war again against its will, beyond fighting low-intensity conflicts like the Palestinian intifada. “By this analysis, there was no need to prepare for war, but there was also no need to seek eagerly paths towards stable, long-term agreements with our neighbors.” In other words, Israel’s false sense of military invincibility has been a major obstacle for peace with its Arab neighbors. If there will be no more war, then there will be no need for lasting peace. Why bother with territorial concessions when the other side is too weak to get them by force?

Israel’s national security policy was thus trapped in a fateful purgatory, only to plunge into what would become its longest-ever war with a neighboring foe.

It all happened within a few hours last July 12. Around 9 a.m., Hezbollah fighters crossed the Lebanon-Israel border and abducted two reservist soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, from a patrol vehicle. That was followed by artillery and rocket fire along the border. Olmert heard the bad news in his Jerusalem office, while he was meeting the parents of Gilad Shalit, a conscript who had been abducted two and a half weeks before in a similar manner in Gaza.

This was too much to take; barely six months in office, Olmert felt he had to prove his strength as a national leader. His predecessor, Ariel Sharon, had been Israel’s top battlefield commander, but Olmert hardly did any military service. He felt that the country’s enemies, Hamas and Hezbollah, were putting him to test — indeed, Hezbollah leader Hassa Nasrallah had mocked his inexperience — and Olmert vowed to teach them a lesson.

Olmert praises himself on his ability to make quick decisions instead of hesitating and deliberating. Here was his chance to be the new Churchill. Sharon had been traumatized by his failure in the first Lebanon war, in 1982, and during the previous five years sought to “contain” periodic Hezbollah attacks and avoid reopening the northern front. Olmert apparently believed that he could do better, and he was not held back by the haunting history Sharon had carried.

At lunchtime, reporters gathered at the inner yard of the prime minister’s official residence in Jerusalem, among flowerpots of red geraniums. Olmert came out with his guest, then Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. The Japanese leader spoke at length about Mideast peacemaking, while Olmert showed obvious signs of impatience. Peace was the last thing on his mind that day, in lieu of fierce retaliation against Hezbollah. When his turn to speak came, he announced that “our response will be very, very, very painful” for the Lebanese. “This is war,” concluded the reporters who rushed to file.

And that was it. The Winograd report found no trace of serious consideration at the highest levels of government about this pivotal decision, which it likened to having taken place inside a black box.

But the unfolding tragedy quickly became national in scope. By midnight, the Israeli Cabinet unanimously approved a military plan to bomb Hezbollah’s long-range rockets and other facilities inside Lebanon. The public gave overwhelming support to the government, with even die-hard left-wingers backing the massive retaliation and calling for more. Nobody stood in the way. Dissenters within the Cabinet, such as former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, whispered some concerns about possible complications but, quickly rebuffed, eventually voted with the crowd. It was groupthink at its worst.

And they were deadly wrong, concluded the Winograd report. Instead of singing the chorus, the ministers should have asked the enthusiastic Olmert and the overconfident chief of staff, Halutz, how they planned to defeat a well-positioned guerrilla force armed with thousands of rockets trained on the entire northern part of Israel. Hezbollah had prepared for exactly this kind of war for six years, ever since Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon in May 2000. Yet the Israel Defense Forces lacked a credible, tested operational plan for the northern front. Moreover, in the fateful summer of 2006, the commission found, Israel was led by a team of rookies who lacked both experience in matters of war and intimate knowledge of the Lebanese theater.

Israeli culture is built upon improvisation. According to an old military slogan, “Every plan is merely the basis for changes.” Nevertheless, this was outright negligence, the Winograd Commission said. Occupied for six years with fighting in the occupied territories against the Palestinians — who lacked a military organization, modern weaponry or fortifications — the Israeli army was untrained for the well-organized, well-armed force entrenched in Lebanon. But Halutz told Olmert, who visited general headquarters the day before the war, “You can trust us” to crush Hezbollah.

That was enough for the Israeli prime minister. Olmert, Halutz and others did not bother to weigh options other than a massive bombing campaign. They did not ask whether Sharon’s policy of restraint and containment should be preserved, despite the abduction. They did not set credible, attainable goals for the operation. They did not conceive an exit strategy. And despite their understanding that Hezbollah would retaliate by targeting Israel’s north, they ignored the implications that a barrage of rocket attacks would have “on the operational plan, its timeline or its chances of success.”

Indeed, what started as a blitzkrieg-style aerial bombing developed into a quagmire. The IDF failed to destroy Hezbollah or stop the daily barrage of rockets. And despite their reluctance, Olmert and Halutz were eventually dragged into large-scale ground operations, carried out halfheartedly and with few achievements, while proving costly in lives.

The Winograd Commission, appointed by Olmert shortly after the war, was seen initially as a whitewash to fend off public criticism. But its five members, led by the 80-year-old former district judge Eliahu Winograd, took the country by surprise. They mocked Olmert’s argument that his decision making was flawless, along with his declaration that the war had ended in an Israeli victory. And they ripped into the hierarchical status quo, which they said overemphasizes military considerations and gives the IDF too much influence over national policy.

Olmert has vowed to embrace the “organizational” conclusions of the Winograd report, but where will that lead Israel? In the short term, the report has thrown the country further into familiar political turmoil. Israelis were less than enthusiastic with Olmert’s leadership from the beginning, giving him only lukewarm support in the March 2006 election. The failed war in Lebanon was followed by an endless string of sex and corruption scandals at the highest levels of government. At around 13 percent, Olmert’s approval ratings have been the lowest in Israel’s history. But Olmert has kept on, relying on a coalition of weak parties and fearing another election while having at least some floor under him from a booming economy and a decline in Palestinian terrorism. (The latter, however, is largely considered a legacy of Sharon’s.)

True to stubborn form, Olmert has vowed to keep his job and overcome the blow to his already tenuous hold on power. He is doubtful of his success, but he is trying to fight anyway, arguing that the Winograd report does not explicitly call for his resignation and that his ouster would inevitably throw the country into another election. He may survive for several more months, pending his ability to ignore public protest and keep his coalition partners beside him. On Tuesday morning, Eitan Cabel, a junior minister from the Labor Party, submitted his resignation. But Cabel is a political lightweight; Olmert’s fate hangs on Tzipi Livni, the popular foreign minister and Olmert’s deputy. If Livni — who got a more positive nod from Winograd for her initiative to find a diplomatic way out in the early days of the war — jumps off Olmert’s sinking ship and is joined by several more members of the Kadima ruling party, it would prove fatal to Olmert.

Olmert’s downfall may lead to an early election, which would probably be another contest between two former premiers, Benjamin Netanyahu (who leads the opinion polls) and Ehud Barak, who is currently running for Labor Party leadership. Another scenario holds the 83-year-old Peres returning as an interim steward of the country. After all, the Winograd Commission favors experienced leaders, and nobody has more experience than Peres, who started his political career in the 1940s.

But either way, whatever slim hopes there were for a resumed Israeli-Palestinian peace process are doomed for now. Olmert is unable to make any real decisions, and his Palestinian counterpart, President Mahmoud Abbas, is hardly any stronger. Israelis are preoccupied with the leadership crisis; they want a leader they can trust under fire. Before the Winograd report, Olmert tried to persuade prominent members of Israel’s peace camp that he was willing to go full speed ahead with the Palestinians if the left would shore up his political survival. But this appears no more than a fairy tale now, given his precarious position.

The censure of Olmert is not only ominous for the career of the beleaguered prime minister, but for the prospect of regional stability. Israel’s military is warning of explosive upheaval in Gaza, or another war in the north, perhaps with Syria. And an American-led confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program is looming. The second Lebanon war convinced Israelis anew that Iran, with its rocket-armed allies and proxies in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza, is aiming toward Israel’s collapse — emboldened by America’s perceived weakness in the region because of the debacle in Iraq. The Winograd Commission affirmed this analysis in its report.

Indeed, some worry that the power of deterrence stemming from Israel’s military might was seriously damaged by the failure in Lebanon. The IDF lost its image of invincibility — clearly, it is not the same military that defeated three Arab states in six days in 1967 and brought back hostages from Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976. However, the world stood idly by while Israel’s air force crushed Lebanon for almost five weeks, killing hundreds of civilians and destroying roads and bridges. (Washington did, however, veto Halutz’s plan to black out Lebanon’s electric grid.) If Syria is tempted, or lured by Iran, to liberate its occupied Golan Heights by force, it would still have to worry about suffering the wrath of Israeli air power. Olmert publicly warned Damascus of “miscalculation,” in a recent meeting with visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and the threat is still hanging in the air.

Middle East wars usually erupt when nobody wants them. Following the war in Lebanon, the government increased the IDF budget, and the military launched a massive retraining program. But the perception of a leadership vacuum in Jerusalem may prompt Israel’s adversaries to attack before the IDF completes its reconstruction.

Yet, dark as its conclusions are, the Winograd report gives hope in the longer term for a change in the national attitude. It calls for recasting the policy-making process and giving stronger emphasis to civilian institutions, such as the foreign ministry. It also seeks to strengthen Israel’s National Security Council, now a secondary instrument of the prime minister’s office, and give it authority over interagency intelligence assessments and preparations for Cabinet sessions. Such recommendations were made, and rejected, in the past. But the fallout from the Winograd report may be unique enough to force true reform, which if implemented could motivate Israelis to consider peaceful options before rushing to the battlefield. Feeling vulnerable, rather than invincible, may be the greater source of security in the long run.