MAS CONFLICT
As dust settled over Gaza and Israel, analysts weighed up the conflict's winners and losers. Here's what they found.
Conflict leaves 'cruel paradox'After Israel-Gaza: Who won, who lost?
November 24, 2012 -- Updated 2025 GMT (0425 HKT)
 Hamas stronger after the conflict
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Israel: The conflict represents a qualified victory for the country
and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to CNN's Paula
Newton. "Just months before an election, Netanyahu's government targeted
and killed Hamas' military leader, Ahmed al-Jaabari. Hundreds of
airstrikes on Gaza followed, but, the real victory was possibly the
combat debut of Iron Dome, the U.S.-funded defense shield that kept
dozens of Hamas rockets from hitting Israeli civilians."
The Israeli military itself said
the intensity of its airstrikes on Gaza meant it made a significant
dent in Hamas' offensive capability. Over the eight-day conflict, the
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) looked to deplete some of the estimated
12,000 rockets it says Hamas has in its arsenal and destroy tunnels that
are said to be used to smuggle weapons.
 What Israel's defense means for Middle East
 Nervous calm in Israel after cease-fire
 Analyst: Killing Hamas chief was mistake
 Mitchell: Continuing to try for peace
But some analysts
questioned whether the death of al-Jaabari really would benefit Israel.
Elizabeth O'Bagy, from the Washington-based Institute for the Study of
War, told CNN she believed it was in fact a mistake. "It will lead to
the proliferation of extremist groups (in Gaza), less control over
rocket attacks and an increase in violence against Israel."
 Map: Israel
Al-Jaabari controlled the
militias with an iron grip, as Jon Alterman, for the Washington-based
Center for Strategic and International Studies, pointed out. "There were
people in Hamas jails for firing rockets at the wrong time and
al-Jaabari was one of the guys who put them in jail. Now when someone
decides to take a pot-shot, they can take a pot-shot."
The background of the
conflict took place in a region greatly changed since the last
significant violence of 2008-09. In the UK's Daily Telegraph,
Richard Spencer wrote that the Arab Spring had changed the situation
significantly for Israel: "Once it could afford to retreat into a
default position of using overwhelming force in its own defence. After
all, the Arab dictators it faced were equally unflinching -- in their
rhetoric, at least, even if their actions often failed to match.
"Now Israel has a
political base that is more divided and broad-ranging than ever before,
and allies that are profoundly uneasy about its policies. And suddenly
its neighbours are more pluralist. Hamas has new democratic allies
abroad, in many cases allied to the U.S. -- Egypt, Turkey and Qatar
prominent among them."
Even before the cease-fire was brokered, CNN's Nic Robertson observed:
"Where does this leave Israel? Simply put, while Israel is stronger
militarily, it is in a weaker political position than it was in 2009.
"The long universal of
the Arab world is a dislike of the Israeli state's treatment of
Palestinians. In the past most Arab leaders were dictators, able to take
a path far different from the views of the Arab street. Not any more.
The region's new post-Arab Spring democratically-elected leaders are
only too aware of the radical hardliners waiting for an opportunity."
Hamas:
Despite the deaths and destruction in Gaza, the Islamist political
movement that rules the territory has emerged emboldened from this
conflict and its truce, according to some observers.
"Hamas has emerged stronger, it has consolidated its control over Gaza and it has gained now more legitimacy," said Aaron David Miller, a Middle East scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, told CNN.
In the eyes of many
Palestinian people, the militant leaders of Gaza took on Israel more
boldly than ever before, firing rockets farther than ever before. And
they may yet manage to get an easing of the Gaza economic blockade if a
more comprehensive deal can be reached.
"Look what they
accomplished; they, rather than (President Mahmoud) Abbas, has put the
Palestinian issue back on the international stage," says Miller.
But with Al-Jaabari once
a key figure in uniting rag-tag Hamas militias into organized brigades,
counter-intuitively his death could mean more unrest ahead. "He was an
enforcer of peace as well as war," said Alterman, adding that his death
may "make it not only harder to reach a peace agreement, but it can make
it harder to avoid war."
Fatah: Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction that governs
the West Bank have lost much in this conflict, commented CNN's Newton.
"He was supposed to be the moderate peace broker who could finally forge
a new deal with Israel. Now he cannot even claim to speak for all
Palestinians and has shown that he has no leverage with Hamas, his
archrival."
In an op-ed for CNN,
Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies
at the American Enterprise Institute, said Hamas was not trying to
destroy the state of Israel. "Rather, it was to gain the upper hand in
its endless and fruitless battle against Fatah for the Palestinian
political mantle, ideally with the wind of the Arab world's Islamist
revolutions at its back. That won't happen either.
"Egypt's Mohamed Morsy
and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan are willing to lend rhetorical support
and a few visits to Gaza, but they're never going to do anything
substantial for Palestinians because they neither care enough about
actual Palestinian people nor wish to queer their pitch with Europe and
the United States."
Egypt: President
Mohamed Morsy, clearly underestimated, deftly navigated what is a
minefield of competing interests, including those of his own country.
Hamas has emerged stronger, it has consolidated its control over Gaza and it has gained now more legitimacy.
Aaron David Miller
"For a civilian president in Egypt perceived as a weak leader, he has, much to everyone's surprise, delivered," said Miller.
Morsy proved he had the
leverage necessary to bring Hamas to the table and get its leadership to
agree to a cease-fire. Brokering that deal has given him much needed
political capital in both the Arab world and the United States.
Under former President
Hosni Mubarak, the country's security forces had suppressed its own
Islamists in the Muslim Brotherhood, even jailing Morsy at one point.
That gave Morsy and his government influence with Hamas that Mubarak, a
product of Egypt's military establishment, never had, said Fawaz Gerges, a professor of international relations and Middle East analyst at the London School of Economics.
"Hamas listens to
Mohamed Morsy," Gerges told CNN as the talks were still going on. "Hamas
looks up to Egypt now, at this particular stage, and that is why Egypt
has emerged as the most important state vis-a-vis Hamas and Gaza."
Egypt's role in the talks was "pivotal," he said.
Iran: The Islamic republic's nuclear program was one of the unspoken aspects to the conflict, according to world affairs columnist Frida Ghitis.
"Iran and its nuclear program also play a powerful psychological role,
as observers and participants ponder the parallels between the latest
Israel-Hamas conflict and a possible war in which Iran would stand
against the U.S. or Israel, and perhaps other NATO allies.
"Little wonder then that
Israel has received strong support from U.S. President Barack Obama --
who has repeatedly stated, "We are fully supportive of Israel's right to
defend itself from missiles raining on people's homes" -- as well as
from nations including the UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, the
Netherlands and others.
"When Israelis see a
rocket launched from Gaza, the thought that one day that rocket could
carry nuclear materials burns hot in their mind."
But Iran's hand was
arguably weakened after this episode as Israel's Iron Dome shot hundreds
of its missiles out the sky, CNN's Newton said.
While Israel has always
accused Iran of smuggling weapons to Hamas through the Egyptian border,
Iran today implicitly confirmed it.
"Gaza is under siege, so
we cannot help them. The Fajr-5 missiles have not been shipped from
Iran. Its technology has been transferred (there) and are being produced
quickly," Mohamed Ali Jafari, the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard,
is quoted as saying by the Iranian news agency ISNA.
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