During the Vietnam War, Henry Kissinger observed that “the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win.” That maxim explains why Israel lost its latest war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Although the militant Islamist group suffered heavy losses in Israeli airstrikes, it emerged “strategically stronger after eight days of inconclusive fighting.” Hamas fired some 1,500 rockets at Israel, killing six Israelis and forcing millions more into bomb shelters. The cease-fire brokered by Egypt bars Israel from targeting the group’s leaders and fighters—leaving them free to plot further outrages—but does nothing to stop the flow of rockets and arms into Gaza from neighboring Egypt. As soon as that peace deal was announced, thousands of Gazans rushed into the streets to celebrate Hamas’s “victory,” said Yossi Klein Halevi in TNR.com. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will struggle to persuade “voters that those celebrants were wrong.”
But “total victory” over Hamas was never a possibility, said Barry Rubin in The Jerusalem Post. Overthrowing Gaza’s Islamist rulers would have required a massive ground and air offensive that would have killed thousands of Palestinian civilians and provoked “so much international horror.” An occupation force would have had to stay behind in Gaza to prevent Hamas from retaking power, resulting in daily gun battles and a steady stream of Israeli soldiers coming home in body bags. Given those constraints, Israel’s limited anti-Hamas operation can be considered a success, said Peter Beinart in TheDailyBeast.com. In just over a week, it killed scores of militants and massively depleted the group’s missile stockpile. Yes, civilians were killed, too, but it was the only way for Netanyahu to protect his citizens from terror and death. “Any government—most certainly including our own—would be hard pressed to ignore that benefit.”
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