• The NY Times confirms the quality of Israeli intelligence:
Muhammad al-Zarb said that the Israelis somehow seemed to know which tunnels were commercial and which were run by Hamas, and that they seemed to be selective in their bombing. “If someone has a tunnel for Chipsy, it seems O.K.,” he said. “When a Hamas guy has a tunnel for weapons, they bomb it.”
• Jeffrey Goldberg on Fatah:
I've been talking to friends of mine, former Palestinian Authority intelligence officials (ejected from power by the Hamas coup), and they tell me that not only are they rooting for the Israelis to decimate Hamas, but that Fatah has actually been assisting the Israelis with targeting information.
• AP after an Israeli air strike destroyed a mosque:
"The strike set off numerous secondary explosions, caused by the munitions stockpiled in the mosque," the spokesman said. Israel would continue to attack militant targets, "even if they (Hamas) cynically choose to operate from locations of religious or cultural significance."
• An ominous Wall St. Journal foreshadow of what's in store for IDF ground forces:
"We don't wear our uniforms, and we carry smaller guns so the Israelis can't identify us," said a 32-year-old police lieutenant, who said his first name was Muhammad but refused to give his last name.
• Robert Lieber on Arabs leaving Hamas hanging:
. . . any realistic hope of progress toward a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a successful two-state solution requires that Hamas suffer a severe setback in the present fighting in ways that seriously damage its capabilities and weaken its political credibility among Palestinians. Leading officials of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority know this and, notwithstanding their formulaic criticisms of Israel, have explicitly blamed Hamas for the current violence.
