Egypt has brokered what’s described as a long-term cease fire agreement between Hamas and Israel. It’s basically the same deal the Hamas brain trust rejected a month (or about 1500 dead Palestinians) ago. While predictably declaring victory, Hamas failed to attain any of their stated goals, the primary one being an end to the Israeli and Egyptian blockades. They’d fired over 2000 rockets into Israel during the conflict and all they have to show for it is about the same number of dead Palestinians, hundreds of thousand of tons of rubble, a decimated tunnel infrastructure and incontrovertible evidence that Israeli engineers know what the hell they’re doing. But as the AFP photo above illustrates . . .
The current cease fire is temporary at best, as every pragmatic Israeli who’s watching the situation knows all too well:
“At this point, a cease-fire to me only means that I need to prepare the city for the next round,” Mayor Itamar Shimoni of Ashkelon, a city of 115,000 less than 10 miles from Gaza, said in a radio interview.
We don’t remember where we read it, but someone recently wrote something to the effect that that under Hamas, Gaza looks like Haiti. Under the Isreaelis, it would look like Santa Barbara. You can bet your last shekel Hamas is already back at work, using whatever materials they can scrounge to dig more tunnels and rebuild their little paradise all over again.