Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fighting for his political life. He is using all sorts of questionable strategies and even crossing more than a few red lines in his attacks on his rivals Benny Gantz and the Blue and White party. On the other hand, he is showing great restraint on the Gaza front, carefully considering Israel’s response to the rockets that have been fired from there at the center of the country. Netanyahu's critics on both the right and the left have not missed an opportunity to depict Netanyahu as surrendering to Hamas' terror, but he is actually acting responsibly, especially in the face of all those eager to go to war.

Yes, we’re talking about the same Netanyahu who is referred to disparagingly as “easily pressured.” It is the same Netanyahu who worked hard to unite the far-right Kahane activists’ Otzma Yehudit (Israel Power) and pro-settler HaBayit HaYehudi to avoid losing votes. It is the same Netanyahu who is almost always quick to dance to the tune of the right; the one who will not let New Right leader Naftali Bennett pass him from that direction. While Netanyahu's political rivals have been offering voters populist solutions on Gaza that would allegedly work miracles and ensure quiet for generations to come, Netanyahu has made a point of walking between the raindrops. He’ll raise a fist to assuage his most belligerent supporters and then order the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to act with all possible caution to avoid getting dragged into another military adventure lacking any purpose.

Gaza has experienced three full-blown wars since the Hamas coup of June 2007. Two of them —Operation Pillar of Defense (2012) and Operation Protective Edge (2014) — occurred while Netanyahu was in office. None of these wars solved Gaza’s problems or the problem of Gaza. They merely aggravated the already awful living conditions of the enclave's residents.

Naftali Bennett, whose New Right isn’t doing very well in the polls, is promising voters that he will fight Hamas. How? According to Bennett, the reason Israel stopped winning in Gaza is because the IDF appointed officers who are not “fighters” with every fiber of their being. He has called the IDF’s commanders for Gaza “parve” — the designation for kosher food that is neither meat nor dairy — to suggest the soldiers' lack of determination and has promised to bring back the “winning horses.”