News Service from House Harris

MID: Temptations and dangers for Israel of humiliating Hamas

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Jan 15 AFP - Israel may have dealt a heavy blow to Hamas in its war on Gaza but it will live to regret any attempt to grind the Islamists' faces in the dust, Palestinian and Israeli observers said Thursday.

As the offensive on Gaza entered its 20th day, Israeli troops could be seen surrounding the homes of several Hamas leaders in Gaza City, raising expectations they were seeking a prize scalp to highlight their supremacy.

But while the temptation to publicly humiliate its Hamas tormentors may be irresistable to Israel, Palestinians on the West Bank who otherwise have little sympathy for Hamas say such a tactic would ultimately be counter-productive.

Writing in The Independent, a British daily, Hamas's prime minister in Gaza, acknowledged Israel's military might but said it could never crush the spirit of resistance.

"Undoubtedly, Israel could demolish every building in the Gaza Strip but it would never shatter our determination or steadfastness to live in dignity on our land," said Ismail Haniya.

Wassaf Erakat, who headed the Palestine Liberation Organisation's (PLO) artillery unit during its years of exile in Beirut, said it seemed the Israelis were looking for more than just military victory.

"I think the troops may try and enter places of symbolic importance in Gaza such as the PLC (Palestine Legislative Council or parliament) building, and certainly they want to arrest one or two Hamas leaders in their homes," he told AFP.

"They want these pictures so they can they have some kind of 'proof' that they have won a clear victory.

"But even if they corner the fighters into the last half-a-kilometre of Gaza, the Palestinian people will still carry on and support them (Hamas)."

A leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades -- a largely West Bank-based militant group which carried out dozens of suicide attacks following the 2000 uprising but has voluntarily disarmed and mostly disbanded in recent years -- said Israel consistently made the mistake of trying to humiliate its enemies.

"During the second intifada (Palestinian uprising), they used to do things like arrest our fighters and then force them to strip to their underwear," Zakaria Zubaidi told AFP.

"But it just doesn't work because we've been living under occupation for 60 years now, humiliated every day at the checkpoints, and we've grown immune to it all."

In 2004 an Israeli F-16 dropped a bomb on the wheelchair-bound Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, and assassinated his successor weeks later, but the killings had little impact on the movement.

"It no longer affects us and it will just make things worse for them in the end. It masks their military failure when they feel they have to do this kind of thing," Zubaidi said.

Similar warnings are also being heard in Israel.

The usually fiercely patriotic media said on Thursday the political leadership would be making a serious mistake if they kept the army to stay until they can parade captured Hamas fighters with their hands bound for the cameras.

The Israeli columnist Yael Paz-Melamed said Israel's "power of deterrence has been restored in a huge way" with its offensive which has killed over 1,000 people, but it would be a mistake to seek Hamas's "public humiliation".

"When the enemy's honour is trampled, particularly in the Middle East, this only enhances its motivation to restore its lost honour by military means," he wrote in an article in the Maariv daily.

An editorial in the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot also cautioned against pushing the 20-day-old war into a third week.

"It's time to declare our victory and end the operation in Gaza," said the editorial. "We've won, that's enough."