Ten days into the operation and following the first 48 hours of the ground assault there is really very little info coming out of Gaza. Al-Jazeera (the only TV station with a crew inside Gaza) is doing a very decent job trying to report from the Strip, but its reporters clearly lack the ability to move from location to location and thus mostly provide reports from the top of a building along the cost, from the main hospital and from Israeli occupied Palestine.
Most Palestinian news outlets are close to useless in terms of real info.
Ha'aretz regularly publishes very interesting analytical pieces, but is terms of hard facts it is about as useless as Palestinian sources.
Hamas is doing a dismal job in terms of PR or information. For example, Hamas clearly makes propagandistic statements whose shelf life is less than 24 hours (such as the story about the two Israeli soliders allegedly captured by Hamas). Instead of taking their inspiration from Hezbollah (whose credibility among Israeli Jews is *higher* than the one of government or Israeli news outlets), Hamas seems to take its inspiration from "Comical Ali" aka Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Saddam's "information minister"; not a good sign for the future...
All in all, there is little or no info coming out of Gaza.
I just listened to a senior Hamas leader (whose name I did not catch) speaking on al-Jazeera who said that the fact that Hamas would send a delegation to Egypt should not be seen as a sign that Hamas is willing to accept a cease-fire. Considering that Egpypt is beyond any shadow of a doubt an Israeli pawn in this entire affair I simply cannot see the point for Hamas of talking to any Egyptians at all. Same thing for the Sarkozy/Kouchner gang whose dedication to Zionism is always impeccable.
Fatah, for its part, is taking a patriotic stance by declaring its full support for the people of Gaza and unity with Hamas, but it is doing so "on the cheap", without any concrete actions to back its words (such as recognizing the legitimacy of the Hamas government in Gaza, for starters).
The USA back Israel 110%. What else is knew? Ditto for the Palau, Nauru, Tuvalu, the Federated States of Micronesia and... ah, yes, the United Kingdom (I always forget this small and utterly irrelevant island).
All this was fully predictable and so far, everything is going exactly according to plan (including the "monumental achievement" of the glorious Israeli armed forces which succeeded in cross the 5 kilometers from its assembly areas to the beach).
So the bottom line is this: this war is too early to call. There are some worrying signs coming out of Hamas, but what will really decide where all this goes is the tactical situation on the ground. My hopes are not so much with the (decidedly unimpressive) political leadership of Hamas as with the people of Gaza. It is their willpower to resist which will determine the outcome of this war.
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I wish hezzy 2 open a 2nd front! plz mr. nazrallah!
I don't think that is likely. Hizbollah's first duty is to the people of Lebanon and there's an election coming up. I doubt Nasrallah would throw away the lives of God knows how many Lebanese. If there was a chance of inflicting a serious military defeat on Israel it might be another story but that's not on the cards. Hizb won the 2006 war because it was on the defensive in ground it knew inside out.
Hizb needs to prepare for the next attack on them. I'm afraid any Israeli "success" in Gaza will encourage the upcoming Netanyahu government to seek another showdown. (With the full backing of our 'change' president) I don't think the Hizbollah leadership or fighters are in the least bit afraid of taking on Israel again, but they ARE afraid of being **BLAMED** for it. So they have to let Israel shoot first.
OTOH, if any particularly outrageous act (though its hard to imagine what would pass for that now) takes place in Gaza, Hizb may feel the need to act. It would have to be something that outrages Lebanese to the point they would support them.
Sadly, one of the unintended consequences of the '06 war is that Israel is taking its frustrations out on the most helpless people it can find. Much like a weak and pathetic man who beats his wife after a bad day at work.
@everybody: I fully agree with what both Robert and Lysander have written here. First, I do not think that Hezbollah ought to open a second front, at least not yet. Robert is absolutely correct when he writes that the first duty of Hezbollah is to the people of Lebanon. He is also correct when he writes that Hezbollah on the offensive would not be anything like what it was on the defensive. To these insightful comments I would add that I do not consider Hamas to be a worthy ally for Hezbollah. This is sad to say, but let's not kid ourselves - these are the facts. The fact that Hamas, Hezbollah (and many many many others out there) share a common enemy does not at all entail that they share much beyond that. The reality is that culturally, religiously, politically, socially and historically Hezbollah is a very different creature than Hamas. I think that Hezbollah has only one worthy ally: Iran. The rest of the actors in the region are inferior is sophistication to these two by a full order of magnitude. This might change in the future, I sure hope so, but this is the reality today.
Lysander writes: one of the unintended consequences of the '06 war is that Israel is taking its frustrations out on the most helpless people it can find. Much like a weak and pathetic man who beats his wife after a bad day at work.
That is *exactly* the core motivation of the entire war. The Israelis got whacked, badly and painfully, by Hezbollah so the pick on a small, quasi-indefensible stretch of land with 1'500'000 refugees, starves them for 18 months, keeps them in the biggest open air concentration camp on the planet and then goes in to "gloriously" kill as many civilians as possible to show the rest of the Arab world what they are still every bit the bloody stormtroopers which they have been for years. Crude - but oh so typical of the sick racist wackos most of the Jewish population of Israel seems to be composed of.
The result will, of course, only be to make Israelis more hated than they already are. As for Hezbollah, they already knew that and they are not scared one bit. Should the 'invincible Tsahal' ever mistake Lebanon for Gaza Hezbollah will be more than willing to immediately remind them of this fact.
I think PressTV have crews also in Gaza. You can watch PressTV Live Streams
"Fatah, for its part, is taking a patriotic stance by declaring its full support for the people of Gaza and unity with Hamas,"
Well yes - but only after the sheer brutality of Israel's massacre made it impossible for them to take any other stance. In the first few days of the 'war', Fatah's 'condemnations' were very ambiguous, and always emphasised how much they blamed Hamas for the whole thing.
I agree that Hamas is no equal to Hizballah in any department. Their pathetic attempts at misinformation are one example. Arabs I have spoken to tell me they admire Nasrallah not only for his steadfast and effective resistance to Israel, but because, alone of all Arab leaders, he tells the truth. When he told Israelis that Hizballah had missiles that could reach Tel Aviv and sink Israeli warships, they sat up and listened. When Hams says the same sort of thing, all we can do is feel sorry for them - and the peopel of Gaza.
I wouldn't be too harsh on Hamas' capabilities. Their position is infinitely worse than Hizb's was. They never had the open borders needed to get the better weapons, and they did not have 6 years to prepare.
Also, some of the stories might not have been intended deceptions. The story of two captured soldiers was based on the a real incident where they almost captured two soldiers. There were also several IDF soldiers wounded in the first day and they might have believed them dead.
And Hamas is not talking of surrender. Their demands for ceasefire include a full withdrawal and end to the blockade. Even Hizbollah was talking about a ceasefire from the very beginning. Just not on Israel's conditions.
Lysander,
I agree that comparing Hamas to Hizballah is to some extent an 'apples and oranges' thing, because HB worked in far more favourable conditions from just about every perspective. However, I still think Hamas deserves a lot of criticism, and geenrally speaking the Palestinian resistance, it has to be said, has been among the more ineffective national liberation movements of modern times.
希望大家都會非常非常幸福~
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