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A RETURN TO VIOLENCE IN MIDEAST

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By STEPHEN FARRELL

The New York Times

Published: January 4, 2009

RAMALLAH, West Bank - On the wall of the Israeli government press office in Jerusalem is a stack of sticky notes pasted one on top of the other with 10,048 scrawled on the top. That is the number of Palestinian rockets and mortar shells fired into Israel from Gaza since 2001.

It is already out of date, and other yellow notes will soon be stacked on top.

For Israel, the tally has prompted internal debate about how to counter the threat from Hamas' rockets and those of other Palestinian factions.

For Hamas, the very existence of that number in an Israeli office is an achievement. For anyone watching the plumes of smoke rising from Gaza in recent days, Hamas dominates the TV news and headlines.

It is not only the publicity Hamas welcomes, but the status conveyed on it as the Palestinians' principal resistance. Its secular rival, Fatah, sits on the sidelines, marginal to the violence unfolding in Gaza, from which Hamas effectively expelled it at gunpoint in summer 2007.

The questions remain: Why did Hamas end its six-month cease-fire Dec. 19? Will it - can it - unleash suicide bombers into Israel in retaliation? And will the devastation make Palestinians fall into line behind Hamas, as they reliably have in the past, or will they lose their support as Gazans count the escalating cost in blood and destruction?

Even knowing retaliation was certain, Hamas seemed to have ended the cease-fire in part because of its long-standing discipline and consistency: For years it has preached to Palestinians the rejectionist credo that Fatah negotiated with Israel and got nowhere. Hamas' way of armed force, it argued year in and year out, was the only way.

And so it appears that Hamas turned its logic against its own cease-fire: Hamas' supreme leader Khaled Meshal said Dec. 27 the cease-fire had yielded few results. If there were no specific benefits - such as freed prisoners or an end to Israeli blockages on Gaza - then the answer, again, was a return to violence.

A major question remains: whether Hamas expected a shock-and-awe Israeli offensive that hit so many buildings at once and left Gaza reeling.

On Thursday, Israel killed Hamas strongman Nizar Rayan, ranked among Hamas' top five decision-makers in Gaza, in Israel's first attack on the top leadership of Gaza's leaders.

The outcome, for the moment, is far from clear because neither side has deployed its full arsenal.

The key issue is whether Palestinians will blame Israel for raining fire upon them - as Hamas hopes; or Hamas for provoking it - as Fatah, Israel and its Western allies hope.

Palestinians are certainly blaming Israel, loudly.

More important is whether once away from television cameras and foreign journalists, Palestinians will say and vote the same way in presidential and parliamentary elections, both scheduled roughly within a year.

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