Did Gaza Work?

The vast majority of reports suggest what human nature would imply: that you don't exactly feel good things toward a massive army that leaves

4,000 homes destroyed, 21,000 badly damaged, 100,000 people homeless, according to several aid agencies... Homes have been blown up or bulldozed, their squashed furniture visible beneath layers of collapsed concrete. Factories for paint, dairy products, soft drinks have been smashed. Schools have 10-foot holes in their walls. Wedding halls are blackened hulks. The American International School, a private institution in northern Gaza, has been destroyed. Mosques are gone.

Moreover, in addition to the buildings that housed Hamas’s main security networks, institutions like the parliament, the main ministries, the central prison and nearly all the police stations are crushed beyond repair.

And yet it is impossible to gage real opinion in a pulverized ghetto run by theocratic thugs like Hamas. Dissenters are shot in the knee-caps. This piece in Der Spiegel suggests that some Palestinians may hold Hamas responsible in some manner:

"I used to support Hamas because they fought for our country, for Palestine," says Sadala. Hamas stood for a new start, for an end of corruption, which had spread like cancer under the moderate Fatah. In the 2006 elections Hamas won the majority with their message of change, said Sadala, who earned a living in the building business. Gesticulating wildly, the 52-year-old surveyed the ruins of the bedroom: "That is the change that they brought about. We were blasted back 2,000 years."