Hamas lost Gaza battles but may still win the war

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 (UPI) -- In conventional military terms, Hamas lost badly in Gaza, but in the far more important long-term struggle for the hearts and minds of the Palestinian people, it followed the model of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland and won big.

In 22 days of fighting that ended with a unilateral Israeli cease-fire Sunday, 1,285 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. By contrast, the Israel Defense Forces lost only 10 soldiers and three civilians killed during their three-week operation, and several of the soldiers were killed accidentally by their own side in "friendly fire" incidents.

Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, therefore proved itself to be militarily vastly inferior to Hezbollah, the Shiite Party of God in southern Lebanon that was able to stand its ground and inflict unexpectedly high casualties on the Israeli army during the brief miniwar of July 2006.

Further, as we have noted in previous analyses, the Israeli army performed far more effectively during this conflict in Gaza than it did against Hezbollah 2-1/2 years ago. This was in large part due to the vastly improved training programs of the army and the far superior leadership it enjoyed in the current conflict.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, proved far more competent and successful than their hapless predecessors, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and former Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, during the Hezbollah miniwar.

Halutz, a former Israeli air force commander, was confident that airstrikes alone would pulverize Hezbollah in its well-prepared positions, and he showed no competence at all in directing ground forces in the land war. Ashkenazi, by contrast, a tough and highly experienced ground combat soldier, mastered all the complex tactical dangers of urban fighting and used his overwhelming firepower in ways Hamas had no answer to.

However, as we warned and predicted in these columns, the Israelis proved ignorant of several crucial principles of war at the strategic level, and, as a result, having won all the battles in Gaza easily, they look likely to suffer far more from the political and strategic consequences of their partial victory.

First, the Israelis pulled out of Gaza without having evicted Hamas from control of the densely populated territory of 1.4 million people. Hamas therefore had the last laugh. It survived the overwhelming Israeli military onslaught and lived to tell the tale.

Second, as a result, Hamas soared in popularity on the West Bank, which is ruled -- feebly -- by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

The 27-nation European Union, the new U.S. government of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference all want Abbas to stay in power and become a credible leader of the Palestinian people in a revived peace process with Israel.

However, all these 85 governments ruling more than 1.8 billion people will fail for a simple reason: Abbas has almost no credibility left with the Palestinian people on the West Bank, and if elections were held there tomorrow -- and they are scheduled to be held before the end of this year -- Hamas would sweep to a landslide victory, just as it did in Gaza in 2006.

As if that is not enough, Israel's very success in killing a significant number of key Hamas leaders during this three-week war did not decapitate the organization but likely will energize it with the blood of martyrs. That has been an all too common consequence of this kind of military operation, carried out without either sufficient ruthlessness or any real political strategy to accompany it.

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(Part 2: The lessons for Hamas and Israel from Irish history)