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One Gigantic Miscalculation

Former Israeli Foreign Minister, Eba Eban, famously once pronounced that the Palestinians took every opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Leaving aside the arrogance of the comment, people in glass houses ought not throw stones! Israeli foreign policy has shown itself to be inept and certainly the way it has calculated how to deal with the Gazans and Hamas has shown that it has taken every opportunity to miss an opportunity. It has certainly miscalculated, big time, if it thought, let alone hoped, that the ferocious attack on Gaza would see Hamas routed.

Haaretz reports on the standing of Hamas now - in a poll taken last week - post the attack on Gaza and its people:

"Hamas's popularity among Palestinians has risen sharply since Israel's three-week offensive against the Islamist group in Gaza last month, an opinion poll released on Monday showed.

If an election were held today, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would beat Mahmoud Abbas, the Western-backed Palestinian president and leader of Fatah, who advocates a peace deal with Israel.

The face-to-face poll of 1,270 people by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research was conducted on March 5-7 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as the rival factions tried to reach agreement on a unity government with Egyptian mediation."

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