Pillar of Defense

“The resistance groups have achieved a historic victory and paved the way for the battle of liberating Palestine." Hamas official Ahmed Bahr

“The occupation and its army were forced to accept our conditions for a cease-fire,” said Abu Ataya, spokesman for the PRC. “This is a great victory.”Ataya said that the Palestinian armed groups have taught Israel “a lesson that it would not forget for a long time.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad praised what he called Palestinian "resistance and perseverance" against Israel, which he said must now "bow" to Palestinian rights, IRNA news agency reported.

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Anyone who thought that Israel's cessation of its Pillar of Defense operation in Gaza and the resultant ceasefire would lead to a beating of swords into plough shares will be disappointed. Israel seemed to have gotten the upper hand in this one, assassinating a top Hamas leader, re stabilizing relations with Egypt and pulling the fangs of an entity that was lobbing hundreds of missiles into the south on a daily basis.

The whole thing started when Hamas shot an anti tank weapon at an Israeli jeep, wounding four soldiers. Israel said enough is enough and took out Hamas Chief of Staff Jabari, hundreds of strategic missile locations and successfully tested its Iron Dome missile system. They were poised to start a ground invasion but in the final analysis it proved unnecessary.

167 Gazans were killed in the conflict by the Israelis and eight by Hamas, who labeled them spies and collaborators. Wiki has a pretty comprehensive and even handed breakdown of the conflict.

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Hamas of course calls the whole thing a major victory, the martyrs blood bringing them closer to the eventual liberation of Palestine. Mashaal is calling for a return to pre 1967 borders, something that will never happen. Hamas shot a missile at Tel Aviv, and even at Jerusalem, an event that has heretofore never happened, being a holy city to three faiths. Wouldn't that be something, if they hit the Dome of the Rock with their own missile? Anyway we now have a cease fire, and I would like to put money up with anybody who thinks that it will hold and is not merely a prelude to greater conflict.

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Hamas refuses to stop arming itself with Iranian missiles and is in no way talking peace. Israel finds itself negotiating with a partner that has vowed to drive them into extinction and a proxy for an Iranian power on the verge of some very sophisticated weaponry.

Hamas is beating their collective chests proclaiming their "victory", an allowance by the Israelis to enter a three hundred yard buffer zone. Their ability to hit and kill the occupier ( the Israelis lost three citizens to missile attacks) is an immense point of pride.

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Is there any way that the Israelis can negotiate with these people and forge a deal that does not in reality amount to national suicide?

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The one thing I get from all this is a sense of hate. A deep palpable hate felt by people on both sides, like the nastiest divorce you have ever seen. They just want to inflict pain on each other at this time, even if it means absorbing nasty blows. And Hamas has now seen that violence does pay off, marginalizing the more moderate Palestinian Authority and showing the Palestinian people that armed resistance pays tangible benefits.

Israel is already seen as an oppressive pariah in the majority of the world, propped up militarily by Uncle Sam and acting like a goliath to the Palestinian's outgunned David. An escalation of force and pressure on the Israelis by Iran, Hezbollah and its proxies will make prospects for peace unlikely and prospects for full scale conflict and mutually assured destruction for all parties concerned seemingly inevitable.