January 20, 2009
GAZA STRIP (ANS) -- Israel and Hamas are both claiming victory in the 22-day conflict in the Gaza Strip that left more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.
According to a story by Jonathan Ferziger and Daniel Williams and published on Bloomberg News, Israeli officials said they had succeeded in their main objective of limiting Hamas’s ability to fire rockets from Gaza into southern Israel. Hamas announced that sheer survival constituted success after the onslaught by sea, land and air by Israeli forces.
Bloomberg said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert addressed Israelis on television hours before yesterday’s unilateral cease-fire, saying the army’s goals "were more than fully achieved."
In Gaza City, mosque loudspeakers along Omar Mukhtar Street broadcast the news of a "gorgeous and great victory" by Hamas that forced Israel to "stop its crimes."
Bloomberg commented that both sides will now seek to demonstrate that the battle was worth fighting. At stake for Israel is the ability to deter further attacks by Hamas and other enemies, such as Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia. Hamas needs to show it still has the muscle to rule Gaza and begin reconstruction.
Bloomberg reported that the Israeli assault killed hundreds of Hamas militants, including some of the group’s top leaders, and reduced Hamas security facilities and government buildings to rubble. The number of rockets fired by Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and European Union, fell to 20 a day at the end of the campaign from 70 at the beginning, according to the Israeli army.
Exorbitant Price
"We had to dispel the myth that there’s no way to stop a terrorist organization from firing rockets at our civilian population," said Dan Schueftan, deputy director of the National Security Studies Center at Haifa University.
Bloomberg said he added, "What we accomplished was to levy such an exorbitant price that those rockets weren’t cost-effective anymore."
Bloomberg said the conflict may also influence the outcome of the Feb. 10 Israeli election, in which former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of the Kadima Party and Defense Minister Ehud Barak of the Labor Party are running to succeed Olmert, who bowed out to defend himself against corruption charges. Netanyahu argued Israel should have gone further to crush Hamas.
"Every one of the candidates is going to be judged on the outcome of the war, but it’s early and the perceptions are still being formed," Bloomberg reported Schueftan said. "Right now it looks good for Barak and Livni, but Netanyahu may benefit if it turns out that the results of the war are not so great."
Bloomberg reported that many of the rockets fired at Israel had been smuggled from Egypt into Gaza through tunnels under the border. Israel got a commitment from the U.S. and European states to help prevent arms smuggling into Gaza.
Strong Success
That commitment, along with low Israeli casualties and the blow sustained by Hamas, point to "a pretty strong Israeli success," Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political science at Bar Ilan University, said in a telephone interview.
Bloomberg said Steinberg contrasted the Gaza fighting with Israel’s 33-day assault on Hezbollah in 2006, which failed to stop the firing of rockets by the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militia into the north of Israel. A government-appointed commission criticized political leaders for mismanaging the war and "found serious failings and flaws in the quality of preparedness, decision-making and performance" by top commanders.
In Gaza, Israel "showed it absorbed the lessons of the war, and even when it made some of the same errors -- the friendly fire incidents, reported incidents in which civilians were killed -- the army didn’t blink this time, and that was the difference," Bloomberg reported Steinberg said.
