Israel’s prime minister and its army are damagingly divided

ISRAELI SOLDIERS near the border with Gaza were surprised on October 24th to see a familiar figure visiting the kibbutzim devastated by Hamas’s attack. Arye Deri, the leader of Shas, an ultra-Orthodox party which is one of the largest in the coalition of Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, also visited military units preparing for war in Gaza. A day earlier, Mr Deri had angered Israel’s military chiefs when he leaked the details of a meeting with his party members in which he had said the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) were “not ready”.