Hamas May Survive Offensive, Israel Says

[tekisui]

Source: Washington Post

Group Is Weakened, Military Officials Assert; Goal Is to Apply Pressure and Force a Truce

TEL AVIV, Jan. 13 -- Israeli military officials said Tuesday that their 18-day offensive in the Gaza Strip had weakened Hamas but that a knockout blow was unlikely. The conflict showed no signs of ending as diplomats reported little progress in negotiating a cease-fire.

The Israeli officials said their strategy was to squeeze Hamas militarily as they try to pressure the Islamist movement into a truce that would include a long-term commitment to stop firing rockets into southern Israel. Some Hamas leaders have said they are willing to cut a deal but others have pledged to continue fighting.

Despite public vows by Israeli politicians to destroy Hamas's military capability, Israeli officials said Tuesday that the movement had lost only a fraction of its fighters and retained a large stockpile of rockets and other armaments. A "few hundred" Hamas fighters have been killed, out of a total force of 15,000, according to a senior Israeli military official.

In a briefing for foreign journalists, the senior official said Hamas still has hundreds of rockets and other missiles. "We do not see where they have a shortage of personnel to fight," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing intelligence matters.

Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israeli military chief of staff, said Gaza had been pummeled by more than 2,300 airstrikes since the war began Dec. 27. "We have achieved a lot in hitting Hamas and its infrastructure, its rule and its armed wing, but there is still work ahead," he told the Israeli parliament Tuesday.

more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/13/AR2009011303170.html

[thunder rising]

1. Duh ... they just made 100K more that are just to yound to kill yet.

[aquart]

2. "May"? Of course they will.

Bringing us back to what was the point?

[tekisui]

3. That's my question.

What was the point? More suffering, a movement away form peace. I wish the solution to the problem was as easy a few thousand bombs. But, it is not.

[Arrowhead2k1]

4. The Israeli leadership is fucking stupid. Just like the neocons that they are.

[Scurrilous]

5. At Cairo Hospital, Injured Palestinians Increasingly Voice Support for Hamas

<snip>

"At Nasser hospital here in the Egyptian capital, the sound of Palestinian Arabic spills out from rooms and floats through the corridors of the fourth floor. "God is great, God is great," Ahmed Hussein, 25, said to a weeping Egyptian woman, one of a stream of visitors coming to pay their respects to those injured by Israeli airstrikes.

"May God make you be victorious," she said. "I cannot stand what is happening to your people."

Neither, apparently, can Hussein, a Palestinian policeman whose right arm was broken when Israeli missiles hit his police academy Dec. 27. Hussein voted for Hamas in the last election but said he never joined their militia. That's about to change.

"I want to go back and fight with Hamas," he said.

A cornerstone of Israel's strategy in Gaza is to crush Hamas's will to fight, especially its determination to fire rockets into southern Israel. But in interviews here with wounded supporters of the Islamist militia, Israel's assaults appear to be breeding more recruits and more popular support for Hamas.

Men who say they have never fought before or were not Hamas loyalists now vow to join the struggle against Israel when they return to Gaza. They include policemen and other professionals who form part of the backbone of Gazan society.

"I supported neither Hamas nor Fatah," said Anwar el-Sahabani, 35, a carpenter with a casts on his right leg and left arm, the result of an airstrike. He was referring to Hamas's rival party. "Today, after all that has happened, I have to support Hamas."

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[Marrah_G]

6. They did nothing but strengthen support for Hamas

Slaughtering women and children never makes you new friends.

[juno jones]

7. But that's the damn point

All that could be left of the Palestinian nation and people could be a single house with two senior citizens and a two year old, but invoking Hamas would be enough to justify their deaths.

It's not the Palestinian govt they want to off it's Palestinians period.

[bunnies]

8. Idiots.

They way to get rid of Hamas in Gaza would have been to turn Gazans against Hamas. You know, by providing the people with luxuries like water and electricity. But no. Some genius there thinks the way to win Gazans hearts is by killing innocent civilians.

Catching flies with arsenic. Too bad no one stopped to think Honey would work better.

But hey, the real goal was to improve poll positions for the coming elections. You dont bomb schools and baby clinics when your point is to win people over. How could Israel think these killings would do anything other than drive people toward Hamas? Hamas really should send them a thank you note.

[Scurrilous]

9. Israeli Arabs torn by Gaza violence

<snip>

"We are in a very difficult position," the woman told me. And then she burst into tears.

We are at a political rally held in this northern city to oppose the war in Gaza. Around us protesters held banners and chanted slogans.

Nearly all of them were Israeli Arabs, including my sobbing interviewee.

"We are citizens of Israel," she said, "but we are Palestinian. Emotionally, we are part of the people in Gaza."

She started crying again, and then explained why she had found the past two weeks so difficult.

"At the street, or at the supermarket, people are supporting the killing of children. And we are living among these people."

The people she lives among are, of course, Israel's Jewish majority.

Arabs make up just 20% of the Israel's population, people whose families lived here before the state of Israel was created, but who accepted citizenship afterwards.

The relationship between the two communities has been under severe strain since the death toll in Gaza started climbing.

"They say there is co-existence," another protester told me.

"But how can we co-exist when Israeli people are saying the army should carry on, no matter that people are dying?"

A young man sporting a keffiyeh, the Palestinian scarf, is one of several who goes further, and voices sympathy for Israel's arch-enemy, Hamas.

"Hamas is struggling for the Palestinian people. I'm not supporting everything they do. But I'm supporting the struggle."

It marks a radical departure to hear sentiments like this shouted on Israeli streets."

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