Isolation..

 

Israel’s edge over Hamas is so large, that any outcome other than victory is unthinkable. Nine weeks into bombardment and no end.

The question is in what timeframe and at what cost.

Hamas rallies a besieged population in Gaza around it in anger and helps collapse the Palestinian Authority government by ensuring Palestinians see it even more as a feckless adjunct to Israeli military authority. 

Meanwhile, Arab states move strongly away from normalization with Israel, the Global South aligns strongly with the Palestinian cause, Europe recoils at the Israeli army’s excessive indiscriminate bombardment, and massive human loses in Gaza, and an American debate erupts over Israel, destroying the bipartisan support Israel has enjoyed here since the early 1970s. 

Isolation from humanity is the real loss.