Only in the Arab world can Hamas seriously declare victory after the devastation it wrought on Gaza this summer.
It’s hard to blame Gazans for taking to the streets Tuesday to celebrate what looked like the end (at last) of the 50-day war.
After all, it has imposed tremendous hardship and a horrible death toll on them. (Too bad, though, that the celebrations apparently caused dozens of injuries and perhaps some deaths.)
It’s also understandable that, after yet another seemingly inconclusive round of fighting with a militarily inferior terror outfit, no Israelis were quick to dance the Hora in the streets of Tel Aviv.
But, like everything else in the Mideast, we take this split-screen picture at face value — as a win for the terrorists — at our peril.
By any cool-headed evaluation, Hamas has suffered a tremendous military setback.
- Israelis assess that more than 60 percent of the rockets Hamas had pre-war were either destroyed or used up. By most accounts, it has a very few of the type of missiles that can reach the Tel Aviv area, where most Israelis live.
- Most of the tunnels that Hamas built at great cost and over years, either to smuggle in arms from Egypt or to attack Israelis, were destroyed by Israeli Defense Force boots on the ground.
- Israeli planes killed several of Hamas’ top leaders in Gaza, including its military No. 2 and No. 3 and one of its founders, in the last days of the war.
Mohammed Deif, the commander-in-chief of the Hamas army (Izz ad-Din al Qassam Brigades), hasn’t been heard from since Israel targeted him last week. Despite Hamas denials, he’s likely dead or incapacitated.
Then there’s the destruction inside Gaza. Hamas may consider it a victory, as it galvanizes world opinion against Israel, yet more than 2,100 Gazans are dead and 100,000 homeless.
The war destroyed 17,000 homes, including some of Gaza City’s most ambitious high-rise apartments and shopping complexes (leveled because Hamas also used them as military installations).
Yet Hamas declares victory.
Worse, much of this could have been avoided had Hamas agreed to the conditions that it accepted yesterday when they were offered July 15 in Cairo.
How about Israel?
Much will be made of the growing acrimony facing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In polling by Israel’s Channel 2, Bibi’s support numbers had plummeted from 85 percent in the war’s outset to 38 percent this week.
Praised at first for his handling of the crisis, Netanyahu is now seen as the bumbler who managed to get the entire world against Israel while dealing a less-than-decisive blow to Hamas.
Residents of the south, who have lived under Hamas rockets threat for years, resent being told to return to their homes after cease-fires were announced earlier in the war, only to see rocket-firing resume after they returned.
Last week, rocket shrapnel killed a 4-year-old who’d gone home with his parents.
Counting the two civilians killed minutes before Tuesday’s ceasefire, this war, the third-longest in the Jewish state’s history, killed 70 Israelis, most of them soldiers.
But Netanyahu from the start defined his war goals much more narrowly than his predecessors had in past skirmishes with terror organizations: It wasn’t about smashing Hamas or ending its hold on Gaza; it was about achieving calm in the south of Israel.
It may take months or years before we know if the devastating blow to Hamas’ military
infrastructure, damage much more extensive than any it has suffered in the past, will suffice to achieve that goal.
And much will depend on the postwar diplomacy.
At the United Nations, US diplomats are trying to bridge the differences between two approaches to dealing with the “root causes” of the Gaza crisis.
On the one hand, there’s the need to rebuild the place, so send in humanitarian aid and allow some hope for the residents. On the other, there’s the real source of the misery: Hamas’ insistence that the Strip become a military base from which to destroy Israel.
Everybody loses if Israel, thanks to pressure from the outside world, lets Hamas once again replenish its arsenal and rebuild its terror tunnels while the United Nations pays mere lip service to ending the aggression from Gaza.
Everybody wins if the cease-fire lasts, Hamas is barred from rearming and Gaza becomes the flourishing Mideast oasis that beckoned after Israel pulled out in 2005.
Or if the Messiah arrives. Whichever comes first.