It seems that world's media agrees with the majority of the world's Muslims that the 900 killed by the Israelis in Gaza are more worthy of outrage that than the two hundred thousand African Muslims killed by Arabs in Darfur. As a result, Hamas is encouraged to attract Israeli fire towards civilian targets, by firing weapons from schools and homes, correctly believing that their tactics will not be criticised.
But commentators are missing the point. The Muslims who have been demonstrating in England, Indonesia and many places in between are indifferent to the altogether greater carnage in Darfur because their fury is not humanitarian, but theological. It is difficult to summarise its often-contradictory views towards the Jews, but the Koran does suggest that, in the time of the prophet, the Jews were a weak people, and likely to remain so. More emphatically, the Koran promises power and superior strength to the Muslims. Today, the military superiority of Jews over Muslims raises horrible doubts about Islam itself. In Darfur, many of the victims are Muslim; but so are many of their killers. As a result there has never been a Muslim protest againt the killing in Darfur that comes close to matching the anger about Gaza.
This is not the only misconception held alike by Muslims and the media. Both also believe that Hezbollah won a great victory in the 2006 Lebanon war. In believing this, they ignore the view of many experts that the Lebanese who support Hezbollah, shocked by the damage done to their country by the war, will not tolerate more Hezbollah adventuring. The Israelis also soundly defeated Hezbollah in direct, face-to-face combat, even though their ground action was belated and inconclusive, with only some six companies involved—who nevertheless killed more than 400 Hezbollah fighters for the loss of 30.
Of course, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, whose name means "victory from God," claimed a great victory for God. But had that victory been real, the Israelis would have been deterred from attacking Hamas for fear that Hezbollah would weigh in to their north. Nasrallah's hints that Hezbollah would help Hamas in the event of an attack actually encouraged the latter to attack Israel. But he has since failed to do anything at all. Even when rockets were fired from inside Lebanon, Hezbollah informed the Israelis that they were not to blame.
Perhaps the most grievous misperception, however, has been that the Israeli attacks have been indiscriminate. According to Gaza sources, until the ground fighting started, some 25 per cent of the dead were civilians. The Israelis said that this was 20 per cent. In either case, this actually made the Israeli assault extremely accurate by contemporary standards. In recent air campaigns in Kosovo and Iraq, targeting errors killed many more civilians than in Gaza.
How did the Israelis achieve such accuracy? The only answer is that people in Gaza told them. Cell phones, ubiquitous even in Gaza, make reporting easy. Some informers are paid. But others are opponents of Hamas, who see that only poverty, suffering and death come from ineffectual rockets fired into Israel. Some resent Iran's role in inciting Hamas to break the ceasefire and publicly oppose any diplomatic solution.
Injustice plays a role too. Nizar Rayan, a Hamas leader killed on 1st January, was on paper a poorly-paid academic. Yet he died with his four wives and ten of his children, in spacious quarters: a man with enough money to heed the Koranic injunction against marrying more wives than one can afford. Those moved to inform against such self-made men could also include disgruntled Fatah members, antagonised by persecution from Hamas itself.
In short, there are plenty in Gaza who might want Israel to take Hamas down a peg or two. Hamas won the 2006 election because it was the only alternative to Fatah's corruption. There is no evidence that support for Fatah has increased. But it is certain that only Fatah could overthrow Hamas. This sets an upper limit on Israel's objectives, for it certainly could not change the regime.
That said, it can weaken Hamas by reducing their combat strength, as it did Hezbollah in 2006. With few exceptions, Israeli ground forces are attacking using raids, not taking and holding territory. They will run out of targets in a matter of days. Then, having weakened Hamas, a ceasefire with credible monitoring would be possible, and desirable, for both sides. For it is the only alternative to renewed occupation.
At this point, Hamas will claim a victory. But then so did a greatly weakened Hezbollah in 2006, after which they were to remain immobile, and the Israeli northern border with Lebanon remains largely quiet. The Muslim world, and the media, will see the "victory" at face value. But Israel will have achieved its objectives.
