Israeli blunder

It's beginning to look as though the Israeli raid into Lebanon yesterday, in violation of the cease fire, was another blunder for the Israeli government. Juan Cole thinks it's clear the raid was intended to capture a high placed Hizbullah leader in order to rehabilitate Olmert's image. Here's some of Juan Cole's take on it:

The raid, instead of rehabilitating Olmert, was another fiasco. Hizbullah appears effectively to have fought it off, killing an Israeli officer and inflicting injuries on others in the party. Shaikh Yazbek remains at large, and Hizbullah is passing out crisp $100 bills to Lebanese Shiites, getting credit for being more well organized than the government. Kofi Annan condemned it. Siniora threatened to suddenly become less cooperative. It did not exactly help Bush recruit more troops from France for the south. France wants a peace keeping mission, not a hot war that might engulf its soldiers, and Olmert just confirmed Paris's suspicions that the French are being suckered into a combat situation. Olmert wants to be Yitzhak Rabin, who presided over the Entebbe operation. But he instead keeps coming up with Operation Eagle Claw and more of a Jimmy Carter image (circa 1979) inside Israel.