Hamas believes, in short, that while Israel will do many things, and do them well, it will not do the main thing. And that, in turn, means that as Israel exhausts its target list, as eventually it will, the storm will pass. Then the green flag of the movement will fly defiantly over the tallest building left standing, its prestige hugely boosted — and Israel’s commensurately diminished — throughout the Muslim world.
Does all this also mean that Israel’s attacks amount to a fool’s errand? Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert likes to point out that no Hezbollah rockets have fallen on Israeli soil since August 2006 — never mind that Hezbollah is both politically and militarily more powerful today than it was before the war. A similar outcome in Gaza would be equally disastrous.
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