Yes, read the Israeli papers - all of the major ones I mean. Look at the polling. Do you doubt Bibi could have crushed Hamas? Yet he didn't. The Israeli public overwhelmingly wanted him to finish off Hamas and his poll numbers plummeted when failed to do.
If you read my post with any level of thoroughness, you'd see that I said Bibi's decisions may have been wise - but the idea in the West that he is a military hawk is just not shared by those on the right in Israel whom many of us here would identify with.
And the pressure from Obama’s America does not factor into his decisions at all?
Destroy Hamas? Do you really think that that would have went over well on the world stage?
I acknowledge I’m one of the very few here who thought the Gaza withdrawal, and a subsequent withdrawal from the areas of Judea and Samaria Israel doesn’t want to keep would have been a good idea. “Finishing off” Hamas, truly destroying them, would mean governing Gaza. Or withdrawal leaving a successor government to fate. Public opinion aside, not sure Israel want’s to govern Gaza, particularly given the more robust Iranian backed threat in the north. Not to mention Iran. All this confronting a nation which, including the Arab population, would be the 5th metropolitan area in the US. What would Atlanta do facing these threats. I doubt Netanyahu doesn’t care much about being a hawk, that’s the US media speaking, or this childish nonsense from the people governing the worlds sole remaining superpower. I think he has his country’s best interests at heart, in a difficult situation. Tough to second guess some of these decisions. Reoccupy Gaza? Invade Lebanon? Go to war with Iran to delay their program a few years?