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Source: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/09/10/israel-has-reasons-to-hope-for-middle-east-peace
Egypt's President Sisi Knows that Hamas Is ISIS-Lite
(U.S. News) Mortimer B. Zuckerman - For months, Hamas fires rockets into Israel in pursuit of its charter to kill Jews, taking its cue from the diabolical words of Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: "Israel's annihilation is the only real cure." The rockets landing in Israel evoke no resolutions at the UN General Assembly. Finally, Israel retaliates. The world wakes up. It's outraged. It screams about Israel's "disproportionate" response. No one considers what might be a nation's "proportionate" response to an enemy dedicated to exterminating every one of its citizens. Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi was an effective mediator for the cease-fire. He does not assign Israel a monopoly of blame. He has eyes wide open to the provocations and disruptions of Hamas that frustrate peace. He has lost scores of police and soldiers to jihadists in his own backyard, the Sinai. He knows that Hamas is ISIS-Lite. Hamas is spinning the war it started as a victory. But Israel accomplished significant damage without a full-fledged invasion. The key tunnels were destroyed, and 1,200 Hamas and Islamic Jihad soldiers won't be murdering again - nor will many of the military leaders who sent them on suicide missions. Hamas has no apparent political will to negotiate a lasting peace. And Israel has been mightily discouraged from risk. It was shocked by Hamas' stealthy preparations for invading through the tunnels of Terror City and appalled, as was much of the civilized world, by the outpouring of anti-Semitic hatred and the public celebrations of terrorists who have massacred Jews. That has all convinced Israelis and much of the international community that the goal of the Palestinians is to delegitimize rather than live alongside the Jewish state. After all, their slogan is a Palestine that is "free from the river to the sea." Since Israel is bordered to the east by the Jordan River and to the west by the Mediterranean Sea, this is tantamount to a demand that the Jewish state be demolished.