Celebrity Hamas

"I feel proud that after 60 years of [Israel] raping our lands we have an army, an army that can hit Israel. None of the Arab armies could do what we have done to Israel."
Fadwa al-Lolo, 30, hair stylist, Gaza City


"The timing reveals everything. Hamas is suffering politically and financially and every Palestinian knows that the wars bring money. After every war donations pours into Gaza."
"After the strike, Hamas officials came to check on their colleagues to support financially and morally, but none of them has even asked about what happened to my family and house. I have worked hard for 14 years to build this house, and it was destroyed in a fraction of a second. I and my seven children are homeless now."
Abu Shadi al-Wehedi, Gaza taxi-driver

The Irone dome rocket seen flying over central Israel on July 09, 2014. Israel launched an offensive against the Gaza Strip with a series of airstrikes in response to increasing rocket attacks into Israel, by Palestinian militants. (photo credit: Nati Shohat/Flash90)

Fadwa al-Lolo owns a villa, an expensive car and three salons. She has found deep satisfaction in the most recent exploits of Hamas, forcing Israel by its constant rocket taunts and abduction threats to respond with all the aerial power at its disposal, while at the same time trying to balance the humanitarian requirement to spare as many civilian lives as a conflict situation may somehow permit through extraordinary caution and precautions.

Abu Shadi al-Wehedi, analyzing the situation that pertains to him personally where a violence-prone authority that instructs every facet of his life has taken this step knowing that it will draw in funding from across the Arab and Muslim world in hopes that the Jewish State will be brought to its knees has also destroyed his home.

Bringing disruption, chaos, grief and destruction to Israel is the goal. For starters. If not by the less-than-formidable arsenal of clumsy rocketry, then with the expense imposed upon Israel to defend itself with the cost of over $200,000 for each of the Iron Dome missiles.

Where all the armies of the Arab Middle East have failed in the past to oppose Israel, Gazans now take inordinate pride in the ability of their terrorist Palestinian group to attack Tel Aviv, Haifa and Dimona, amply demonstrating Hamas's courageous determination to best "the Zionists".  Nor, for all the responding aerial bombardments from the IDF, is Hamas indicating any dire need to surrender, or make a halt to the conflict.

Al-Jazeera has been celebrating along with Palestinians in the Jabaliya refugee camp, reporting on newer rocket assaults from Gaza as an extraordinary achievement. At 8:00 p.m. on Saturday a Hamas announcement coinciding with Israel's nightly news broadcasts boasted that in an hour's time it would fire a new rocket barrage; the J80, named after its leader Ahmed Jabari, targeted by Israel during 2012's Operation Pillar of Defense.

Israelis take cover in Jerusalem on July 12, 2014, during a rocket attack by Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip. (photo credit: AFP/Ahmad Gharabli)

At 9:00 p.m. in came the rockets aimed at Tel Aviv. Although no injuries resulted, propaganda went into overdrive that Israeli casualties had indeed taken place. And thus, celebrations galore, that the Israeli enemy had felt the force of mighty Hamas, David to Israel's Goliath. Which hasn't prevented Hamas's military and political leadership from hiding out in tunnels so none could be harmed. A nephew of Ismail Haniyeh was killed on Saturday, but all is well otherwise

Even while the deaths and injuries among civilians in Gaza rise, deaths of people who have no connection to the conflict, events are still boosting support among the public in Gaza for Hamas. Their popularity is rising in the West Bank as well as the rest of the Arab world, for their demonstrated capacity to make Israel suffer. 

Israel retorts that Israelis' routine lives have barely been impacted, nor have casualties arisen.

Security forces at the site of a house in Beersheba which was destroyed following a Gaza rocket attack on July 11, 2014 (Photo credit: FLASH90)

"The Israelis only understand the language of power, we have been negotiating with them for decades, but negotiations did not work because of Israel's procrastination. I never loved Hamas, and never will, but I really admire them. They die to let people live."

Hammam Ahmed, Gaza City businessman

"Even those, like me, who were all the time criticizing Hamas … now we have to raise up our hats." Talal Okal, a political independent writing for the Al-Ayyam newspaper.

Palestinians gather around a car wreckage after an airstrike in Jabalya refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip, Thursday, July 10, 2014. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)