Day 2 – 1 year ago

According to JCPA’s Daily Alert last December 29th was an admission by Hamas that many of those killed were police officers.

Hamas TV acknowledged this morning that the vast majority of those killed are from the Hamas military

(Elder of Ziyon has shown that there is little difference between Hamas police and Hamas military.)

Of more interest it apears that last year, at least initially there wasn’t much international pressure against Israel to stop fighting Hamas.

Israel is feeling “no real pressure” from the world to end the operation in the Gaza Strip, and the amount of time the international community will sit relatively quietly on the sidelines depends on how things develop, senior diplomatic officials said Sunday.

According to the officials, one errant IDF shell could bring to a dramatic end what has been described as “greater understating than you can imagine” for Israel’s actions.

Not even from the Arab world. (The same world that now wants Israel’s leaders to be tried as war criminals even as it excuses the genocide of Omar Bashir.)

Thus far, Hamas has not succeeded in generating an Arab diplomatic initiative that would lead to a renewed cease-fire on its terms. Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which view Hamas as an Iranian ally whose goal is to increase Tehran’s regional influence at their expense, prefer to wait a bit in the hopes that Israel’s military operation will strip Hamas of its ability to dictate terms. And without those two states, the Arab League will have trouble even convening an emergency summit.

Granted, such a summit has limited practical value. But its absence indicates that Arab solidarity with the Palestinians is crumbling under Hamas’ leadership.

Dore Gold addressed the issue of (dis)proportionality.

•The charge that Israel uses disproportionate force keeps resurfacing whenever it has to defend its citizens from non-state terrorist organizations and the rocket attacks they perpetrate. From a purely legal perspective, Israel’s current military actions in Gaza are on solid ground. According to international law, Israel is not required to calibrate its use of force precisely according to the size and range of the weaponry used against it.

This year, Hamas’s celebration of the war have been sparsely attended.

But a year later, Hayyeh’s bold calls rang hollow. After days of heavy advertising through Hamas Web sites, text messages and radio announcements, only a trickle of Hamas loyalists turned up to a commemoration in the heavily damaged legislative building in downtown Gaza City, the territory’s largest urban area.

Cars whizzed by and pedestrians kept walking, ignoring a siren meant to call for a minute’s silence. Hayyeh’s Jebaliya protest did not even fill the sandy square where Israeli aircraft dropped bombs onto the house of senior Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan, killing him and about a dozen of his family and neighbors.

Whether that’s because of Hamas’s abject defeat, as Barry Rubin observed:

Hizballah doesn’t want renewed war this year, seeking to carry out revenge terrorist attacks away from the Lebanon-Israel border. Hamas is probably cowed enough by the early 2009 fighting (outside observers still don’t realize the extent to which its gunmen broke, ran away, and hid behind civilians, but the Hamas leadership knows), though this can’t be taken for certain.

or because Hamas has demonstrated how little it cares for its own people:

The point is, a year has passed. What political concessions has Hamas offered that might have enabled it to make repairs, improve the lot of its people? None. The United Nations reported this fall that 1 in 5 Gazans now live in what it called “abject poverty.” That is why many parents are no longer sending their children to school. They need the pennies their children can earn at menial jobs to buy food.

Their chieftains don’t seem to care. I have interviewed the leaders of Hamas many times over the years, and all of them offered one consistent refrain, time and time again: We are patient. Our resistance will continue as long as it takes – even centuries – until we reach our goal, full control of Palestine. Of course, that includes the state of Israel.

or some combination of the two, is unclear. Israel’s war against Hamas does not appear to have strengthened the terrorist group politically despite what its apologists claim.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.