So pervasive is the infighting in the government that top officials have tried to assure a traumatised public they are “working in close and full co-operation”.
For 17 days, Israeli ground troops and tanks have been on standby, idling in the dusty fields around the Gaza Strip. Their stated mission: invade the Palestinian coastal enclave and destroy the military capabilities of Hamas, the armed Islamist group, and its ability to rule there.
More than two weeks after hundreds of Hamas assailants surged across the border into Israel, killing more than 1400 people, most of them civilians, and taking more than 220 hostages back to Gaza, many Israelis have been asking what the government is waiting for.
