A certain school of thought in both Israeli and neoconservative circles -- before and after the war in Iraq -- was that if Iraq collapsed into warring principalities, Israel wouldn't mind. Hard-core neocons such as David Wurmser, Dick Cheney's top Middle East adviser, said so explicitly, and it's long been a staple on the Israeli far right that breaking up Arab states and supporting dissident minorities (such as Lebanon's Maronites) was good policy. In that context, Shimon Peres' comments in an interview published by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) are interesting:

The war did not start because of Israel, and I am not sure that its aftermath will affect Israel much [says Peres]. It will be more of a problem for the Arab world if Iraq disintegrates and becomes three different entities. That would cause great problems for the Arab world, for Turkey, for Iran, and for Syria. There are many other confrontations in the Middle East that do not have any effect on Israel, such as conflicts in Algeria, Sudan, Somalia, and elsewhere. Not every conflict in the Middle East begins with Israel or relates to Israel. So there is very little that we have to do in the case of Iraq.

Now, it's true that Israel can't do much. If anything, though, reports of Israeli support for Kurdish separatism aren't exactly helping Iraq hold together. But a clearer example of short-sighted ignorance is hard to find.