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Israel Focused on War Aims in Gaza

[Reuters] Alistair Lyon - Israel's war aims, such as restoring Israel's military deterrence and badly damaging Hamas' armed capacity, have already been achieved, Israeli analysts and officials say. Others, such as stopping Hamas rocket fire into Israel and preventing the Islamist movement from rearming, are still incomplete. Much will depend on the exact terms of a cease-fire agreement that Egypt is mediating. "We don't know yet if the Egyptians will take it upon themselves to block the Philadelphi crossing, or whether Hamas is willing to make a commitment to the Egyptians that there will be a cease-fire for many years," said former Mossad chief Danny Yatom. "Our information...is that Hamas has over-played its hand, that it has alienated large sections of the Palestinian street," said Israeli Prime Minister Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev. "On the day after this crisis is over, when the dust settles, Hamas will be facing a very serious problem with the Palestinian people, specifically the population of Gaza." Shmuel Sandler, a professor at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, said, "What's even more amazing is that the Arab states basically want Hamas to be hit because they see a threat in the ideas of Hamas to their own regimes."
2009-01-16 06:00:00
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