>From page 1 of today's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/world/middleeast/19assess.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
Quick summary: Did Israel gain much by this attack? No. Hamas lost relatively few men, and remains in complete control of Gaza. Did Israel lose much by this attack? Absolutely. By killing a huge number of non-combatants, many of them children, and laying waste to Gaza's infrastructure (very reminiscent of the gratuitous Israel air strikes on Lebanon's infrastructure in 2006), israel has once again made itself the target of hatred all over the world, and the US along with it. In the long run attacks like this can only undermine Israel's alliance with the US and its position in the world, and lead of course to more attacks on Israel itself down the road. So was this basically a pointless and futile exercise, like the war in southern Lebanon in 2006? It sure looks that way now. BTW, I finally dug up that serious book about Hamas by two Israeli scholars that I mentioned here a couple of weeks ago. The book is entitled "The Palestinian Hamas", and was written by Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela (Columbia University Press, 2007). Here is a quote from the blurb on the back (which features a positive word from the New Yorker's David Remnick, who says "Clearly the best book on the subject", and lengthy quote from a highly favorable review in the Middle East Journal): [QUOTE] ...Mishal and ... Sela show that contrary to its violent image, Hamas is essentially a social and political organization, providing extensive community services and responding to political realities through bargaining and power brokering. [END QUOTE] In other words, it is not a bunch of deranged Islamic fanatics bent on genocide against Jews or martyrdom in the process of achieving it, as it has been depicted by one contributor here; it is rather a well-organized, rational and pragmatic political force that provides real services and deals with the many pressing human needs in Gaza. And like Hezbollah in Lebanon, it shares an organic relationship to the community where it presides, and enjoys widespread though or course far from universal popular support among the Gazan population. And as US negotiator and Middle East expert Aaron David Miller said of it a few weeks back, Hamas is the religious expression of Palestinian nationalism. It is going to have to be part of any negotiated settlement to the impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian problem, and attacks like the one witnessed over the last three weeks cannot alter that reality. John Marchioro --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Persons posting messages to not_honyaku assume all responsibility for their messages. The list owner does not review messages prior to posting, and accepts no responsibility for the content of messages posted. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
