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Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/29/AR2009012903446.html
What Israel Gained in Gaza
[Washington Post] Michael Gerson - In Gaza, Israeli forces, responding to an intolerable provocation, inflicted lopsided casualties on Hamas, which displayed a discrediting combination of cowardice and brutality. Hamas fighters used civilians as shields instead of shielding civilians - and some Palestinians seemed to resent it. Hamas leaders hid in the basements of hospitals while ordering public executions for Palestinian rivals, acting more like members of a criminal gang than a nationalist movement. "This hasn't solved the problem," retired Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser, told me. "But it has introduced a completely different cost calculation for Hamas." The launching of Hamas rockets against civilians now has a predictable price - the essence of deterrence. According to Daniel Schueftan, a senior research fellow at the University of Haifa, "It is a fairy tale to say there are no answers through coercive force....We have...operational answers that reduce terror to a tolerable level. It is what we do with crime. It is what we do with terrorism."