Gaza Fire: Israeli analysis of war's outcome, "we're screwed."

"Unfortunately, we're back to the starting point," Shaar Hanegev Council Chairman Alon Schuster, told Yediot Acharonoth, after a grad rocket fell in a courtyard of the synagogue yesterday in Netivot.

Israel resumed air attacks on Gaza, targeting and assassinating three members of the Islamic Jihad and smuggling tunnels on the border.

Yediot Acharonoth:

In the course of the day, eight Kassam rockets, one Grad rocket and two mortar shells were fired at southern communities, and the IAF bombed arms smuggling tunnels in the Philadelphi Road area several times.  A security official described the situation as a "deadlock," and said that the new government would have to make critical decisions regarding the Gaza Strip.

Ma'ariv:

"We've reached a deadlock," a high-ranking security official said.

"We are busy with 'maintenance' work in order to pass the time as quickly as possible until the formation of a new government, which will have to make critical decisions about the Gaza Strip."

Analysis: Israel's operation in Gaza is now a proven failure, according to Yediot Acharonoth columnist Nahum Barnea:

Operation Cast Lead in Gaza was intended to restore the Israeli deterrence vis-à-vis Hamas and create new rules of the game in the south.  Unfortunately, it failed miserably in achieving these two goals.  Hamas did not soften and was not deterred.  The arms smuggling was renewed and the rocket fire has continued.  The residents of Gaza are now perceived by the world as victims of Israeli vindictiveness.  The United States and European Union are applying pressure to open the crossings and are raising money for rebuilding what was ruined.  Egypt is working to form a Palestinian unity government, a move that may be good for Israel in the long term but is a bad sign in the short term.

In brief, we're screwed.

Since the operation ended a month and a half ago, Yediot Acharonoth military analyst Alex Fishman wrote:

The IDF has carried out approximately 70 attacks of various kinds in the Gaza Strip, most of them blowing up tunnels from the air and very few of them targeted killings. All this has been in response to the firing of approximately 110 rockets and mortar shells at Israel by the small terrorist groups that operate in the Gaza Strip. Officials in the IDF and the security establishment believe that as of now, there is no justification to go to more aggressive levels of response. They say that this balance is more reasonable.

Today, no security agency is recommending a return to Gaza for an operation like Operation Cast Lead to the political echelon. IDF officials insist that Hamas is not interested in a rematch. So it is true that it is not preventing other organizations from shooting, and it is true that some of the rockets that were fired at Israel by Fatah were manufactured in Hamas workshops-but, as IDF officials continue to claim firmly, Hamas's supreme interest today is still quiet in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas operatives understood that the current government in Israel would not accede to their demands in the Gilad Shalit case, and that a tahdia agreement would not move forward anytime soon either. So they decided to direct most of their resources toward obtaining international recognition and controlling the millions that will soon begin to stream in for the reconstruction of Gaza in the wake of the conference in Sharm el-Sheikh.

But a lack of a mechanism (a Palestinian unity government) to get money to Gaza without empowering Hamas, has stalled the rebuilding Gaza's and the easing of the suffering of its people.