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But both Olmert and Tzipi soon fell prey to the same self-defeating temptation that had worried me during the meandering war against Hizbollah. Our ground incursion began a few days into the operation. The intention was to stay for a few more days and then, responding to inevitable international appeals, call a halt to a campaign that had already achieved nearly all of its targets. Perhaps wanting to balance the failures in Lebanon there with "success" in Gaza, Olmert wanted us to continue, and expand our attacks deeper into Gaza. I reminded him that we'd agreed the aims beforehand. The longer we stayed, the less clear any gains would be. Yes, our ground forces had so far faced virtually no resistance or casualties. "But that's because we're outside the main populated areas," I said. "The deeper we get in, the better it will be for Hamas. They gain simply by surviving, like Hizbollah." Yet Olmert kept insisting that we'd succeeded so far, so let's not stop.

It wasn't until January 17, three weeks after the operation began, that we announced a cease-fire. Militarily, the operation was a success. While Hamas launched nearly 3,000 rockets into Israel in the year before our attack, there were only 300 in the year that followed. But politically and diplomatically, the extra week reduced, rather than helped, the chances of reaching an understanding for a longer-term reduction of the attacks. To the extent there was any political gain, it was to burnish Tzipi Livni's credentials as a tough potential Prime Minister ahead of the election. That was not her intent. Of all the politicians I've known, she is among the least interested in such games, especially with lives at stake. But it was one of the effects.

She won the election, in a photo finish, with opinion polls suggesting she'd been effective in shaping the campaign as a choice "between Tzipi and Bibi." Kadima got 28 Knesset seats, to 27 for Bibi and the Likud, which gave her the first crack at forming a government. There's no way of disguising the fact that Labor's result in my first election back in charge was a disappointment. We went down six seats, to 13. The big gainer was a far-right, stridently anti-Arab party called Yisrael Beitenu, led by a former Likudnik named Avigdor Lieberman. Tzipi's attempt to form a coalition became less a political process than a contest between rival stalls in a Middle Eastern bazaar. Bibi was holding parallel talks with the Orthodox parties critical to assembling a parliamentary majority. He was matching and raising every assurance of a ministerial seat or budgetary concession that Tzipi was prepared to offer. In the end, she threw up her hands, saying she refused to draw out a process which was not so much a negotiation as organized extortion. I am

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