The Big Hamas Surprise....

As one Gazan journalist says - 'over 1,000 dead' - quite a surprise...

On Tuesday, Moussa Abu Marzouk, the deputy head of Hamas' political office in Damascus, was interviewed on Al Jazeera. Palestinians walking through Manara Square, in the heart of Ramallah, saw Abu Marzouk staring out at them from every corner, from the dozens of television screens that broadcast Al Jazeera nonstop in all the shops. Abu Marzouk promised that victory was near and scorned the IDF operation. Sounding like Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah before him, Abu Marzouk wondered aloud why, after two weeks of fighting, the IDF was still operating in the same areas and not advancing.

For West Bank residents, Hamas' declarations of victory are a little more credible. Al-Jazeera also faithfully broadcasts all the announcements issued by various unknown Palestinian factions about their alleged successes in the Gaza fighting. The running captions at the bottom of the screen report non-stop on wholly fictitious events. The Popular Resistance Committees announce that they have destroyed a Merkava tank; a Hamas official says his organization blew up the chemical factory that's on fire in Ashdod; there are numerous false reports about IDF soldiers being killed. Hamas propaganda films immortalizing a strike on Israeli soldiers are broadcast over and over again. The viewer can't help but conclude that, at any moment, following in the footsteps of the Egyptian military in 1948, Hamas' forces are about to reach the Ad Halom Junction, at Gaza's northernmost point, and that the IDF is readying for a desperate battle to push them back.

An East Jerusalem journalist who was asked about this was more skeptical about the Israeli version of events. "Why do you refuse to publicize the number of your casualties?" he asked. When told that this statistic is available for all to see, he claimed that the IDF hadn't managed to get to any Hamas fighters at all, and had killed only civilians. For more than a few people in the West Bank, the IDF operation in Gaza still constitutes proof of Hamas' success and the Israeli fear of having its army enter an urban area. When Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh eventually emerges from his bunker, he will stand alongside Hamas co-founder Mahmoud Zahar and proclaim his organization the victor - and plenty of people in the West Bank will be ready to believe it.

Haniyeh will have a harder time convincing Gazans. One Gazan journalist told Haaretz this week: "Hamas' only surprise were the more than 1,000 dead we suffered." Some Hamas officials in Gaza worry that after the war, the public will seek to settle accounts with them. This may be why the organization's Gaza leadership opted to send Bardawil and spokesman Ayman Taha, two of its more pragmatic figures, to the talks in Cairo. Messages relayed between the Hamas leadership in Gaza and that in Damascus, which the PA has become privy to, indicate that the Gaza leadership is increasingly fed up with the heads of the Damascus branch blithely volunteering them to press on with the war and risk losing control in Gaza. In Gaza, after nearly three weeks of massive pummeling at the hands of the IDF, the balance of forces is a little clearer.