Winning..

 

Hamas is a third-rate militia compared with Syrian and Egyptian forces, compared to Israel’s sophisticated Army and arsenal. Yet the conflict that erupted this weekend feels more ominous. “Powerful, centrifugal forces have been unleashed that have rewritten the rules for the entire region,” Bruce Hoffman, the senior fellow for counterterrorism at the Council on Foreign Relations."

Unlike confrontations in previous decades which followed a pattern of death, destruction, and negotiated ceasefires, this war is “completely unpredictable,” Hoffman said.

Even a decisive Israeli military victory is unlikely to end the country’s increasingly perilous security challenges. It’s not even clear what “winning” means. 

“There’s no question Israel can inflict tremendous damage on Gaza, on its infrastructure and on its people, and can also target Hamas leaders,” Dan Kurtzer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Israel. 

But movements regenerate, and “sometimes the next leadership turns out to be more radical, more extreme, than the one that was before,” Kurtzer said. Al Qaeda of Iraq, for example, evolved into the Islamic State of Iraq and then, after a U.S. air strike killed its founder in 2006, into isis in 2013.