With the Israeli public heading to the polls for the third time in less than a year on March 3, many have asked whether national security issues have been affected by the political paralysis.
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Israel Hayom reporting suggests that the conventional wisdom among many in the political world is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is holding off on a military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip until the vote concludes.
The assessments that Israel Hayom has come across in the political world indicate that the top echelons in the Israel Defence Forces are convinced that another Gaza war is closer than ever.
But Israeli decision-makers still hope that Israel could somehow make Hamas stop sending incendiary balloons from the coastal enclave and make it halt its attacks without launching a full-scale operation.
According to a senior official, the IDF can easily find itself in a full-fledged escalation if it wanted to go there, but because of the upcoming election and the assessment that large-scale hostilities may cause major disruptions to the democratic process and even lead to the election being postponed, commanders prefer to hold off on major retaliatory strikes against Hamas and to limit any response to Hamas' attacks.
