“The projectile launched from North Korea today appears to have passed over towards the Pacific,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement.

North Korea has said it was putting a satellite into space and but regional powers say Pyongyang is testing a missile designed to carry a warhead to U.S. territory.

Pyongyang said its rockets would drop booster stages to the west and east of Japan.

North Korea has only once tested the rocket, known as the Taepodong-2 missile, in 2006 when it flew for 40 seconds and then exploded.

The first stage booster earlier dropped into the Sea of Japan.

Japan says N.Korea rocket appears to pass over Japan

“The two Qassam-type devices were fired from the northern Gaza Strip and landed in the western Negev,” a military spokeswoman said, referring to the crude, homemade rockets used by Palestinian armed groups.

Gaza militants have fired more than 160 rockets and mortar rounds on Israel since the end of a massive Israeli offensive at the turn of the year aimed at halting the projectiles, shaking the ceasefires that ended the fighting.

Israel has in turn launched several air strikes at suspected militants, weapons caches, and smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border.

On Thursday Hamas said the “resistance movements” had nothing to do with the recent rocket fire and vowed to combat such activities, saying they came at a “bad time.”

Egypt has been struggling since the war ended in January to mediate a more lasting ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and a prisoner exchange to return an Israeli soldier seized by Gaza militants in June 2006.

The Islamist movement has ruled Gaza since June 2007, when it violently drove out forces loyal to the Western-backed president Mahmud Abbas.

Two Gaza rockets hit Israel: military

Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN’s “State of the Union” program that he believed Iran had enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.

“We think they do, quite frankly,” Mullen said.

A recent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency found that Iran had built up its supplies of enriched uranium to slightly more than a ton, about 33% more than Tehran had previously stated it had stockpiled. It takes about a ton of enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb.

Although a November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate found that Iran had stopped developing a nuclear weapon, senior U.S. officials now discount that conclusion. Since taking office, President Obama and other top administration officials have said repeatedly that Tehran is pursuing nuclear weapons.

Mullen said Sunday that the U.S. remains strongly opposed to a nuclear-armed Iran.

“And Iran having nuclear weapons, I’ve believed for a long time, is a very, very bad outcome — for the region and for the world,” Mullen said.

Gates, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” agreed that deterring Iran from making a bomb was a top U.S. priority. But he said a diplomatic solution remains possible.

“They are not close to a stockpile, they are not close to a weapon at this point,” Gates said. “So there is some time.”

Although Iran says the enrichment program is for a civilian nuclear reactor, the U.S. and other governments believe the Iranians intend to use the uranium for a weapon.

Gates said the question for the U.S. was whether the U.N. would be willing to increase the sanctions imposed on Iran. But he also noted that the U.S. would show Tehran an “open door” — an apparent allusion to Obama’s statements during the presidential campaign that he would engage Iran. With lower oil prices reducing Iran’s leverage, the prospects for increasing pressure on the nation have improved, Gates said.

“There has been a continuing focus on how do you get the Iranians to walk away from a nuclear program,” Gates said.

Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and missile technology is a critical issue for the U.S. and NATO. Under the Bush administration, the U.S. pushed for a European missile defense system to protect against Iranian rockets. In the past, Obama and some of his key advisors have been skeptical of missile defense; military officials are wondering if the new administration will slow down or cut back the program

On “Fox News Sunday,” Mullen said he expected the Obama administration to conduct a review of missile defense. Such a policy evaluation would influence how much funding the program gets in the future.

Although many Democrats, including some now in the Obama administration, have been skeptical of the efficacy of missile defense, the system could face a potential real-world test in the days to come.

North Korea has said it plans a test of its longest-range missile. Key military leaders have suggested the U.S. could shoot down that missile. Striking the North Korean missile would lay aside some of the doubts about the missile defense program, but could prove controversial. North Korea has said the test is part of preparations to send a satellite into orbit.

“We have made no decisions, the president has made no decisions,” Mullen said. “I have made no recommendations as to what the North Koreans might do. I would hope that the North Koreans would not be provocative and we are keeping a very close eye on what they do”

Gates and Mullen are the two most prominent officials to have served under President Bush and continued under the Obama administration. In the NBC interview, Gates was asked to compare the two presidents’ styles.

“It is really hard to say,” Gates said. “I think probably President Obama is somewhat more analytical. He makes sure he hears from everybody in the room on an issue.”

Gates said if an advisor does not speak up, Obama calls on him or her.

Iran has the materials to make a nuclear bomb, top U.S. official says

Meanwhile, rockets were fired into Israel on Friday, causing no damage or injuries, and Israeli warplanes struck the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, wounding two Popular Resistance Committee fighters.

Israel and Hamas had a six-month cease-fire mediated by Egypt starting last June, but it was repeatedly violated and after it ended Israel launched a three-week air, land and sea assault on Gaza aimed at stopping the rockets and weakening Hamas. Some 1,300 Palestinians were killed and thousands of buildings and homes destroyed. Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, also died.

The new prospective accord, again being mediated by Egypt, is aimed at rebuilding Gaza after the war and involves both reconstruction and reconciliation between Hamas and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, according to Ismael Ridwan, a Hamas spokesman, who spoke by telephone after extensive talks between Egyptian and Hamas officials.

He said among the materials that would be allowed to flow into Gaza in the new arrangement were cement and steel, which Egypt would monitor. Those materials are desperately needed for rebuilding, but the agreement would not allow pipes, cables and chemicals that Israel fears could be used for bombs.

Israel wanted to include the release of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, seized and held by Hamas since the summer of 2006, but Hamas said that would happen only in a separate, if linked, deal that frees hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

The director of Hamas’s political bureau in Syria, Khaled Meshal, said that there was no agreement about Corporal Shalit and that Israel was trying to link his release with opening the border crossings into Gaza.

“We are opposed to that, and we have made that clear to the Egyptian authorities,” Mr. Meshal said in an interview on Libyan television. He was in Tripoli to thank the Libyan leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, for his support of Hamas during the Gaza conflict.

Mr. Meshal’s deputy, Moussa Abu Marzouk, told the Egyptian state news agency late Thursday that an 18-month truce with Israel had been agreed on and that it would include opening the crossings into Gaza from Israel and would be announced within two days.

But the senior Israeli official, who plays a key role in such negotiations and speaks only on condition of anonymity, said that all of this was premature because Israel’s elections last Tuesday put off any serious consideration of Hamas’s offer and that consultations would not start again until next week.

“We are only allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza, and that has not changed,” the Israeli official said. “Egypt has not yet come to us with the details of what it discussed with Hamas.” Amos Gilad, Israel’s negotiator with Egypt on the truce, is to head back to Cairo at the start of the coming week.

One big concern of Israel’s is guarantees that Hamas is not rearming through smuggling tunnels from Egypt or on the international arms market; Israeli officials will be looking for evidence in the new deal that such re-supplies have been stopped.

Hamas Sees Cease-Fire Within Days; Israel Demurs – NYTimes.com

The strikes targeted “open areas” near the town of Rafah and tunnels along the border with Egypt, residents said.

An Israeli military spokesman confirmed that the “Israeli air force intervened in the Gaza Strip,” late on Friday.

“Our planes attacked four tunnels that were dug under the border with Egypt and used for weapons smuggling,” the spokesman told AFP news agency.

“An arms depot was also targeted and the explosives that were stocked there exploded,” he said.

The raids came hours after Palestinian fighters fired two rockets at southern Israel without causing damage or victims, according to a military spokesman.

Shalit talks fail

The strikes also came after reports that indirect talks between Israel and Hamas over a prisoner swap to free Gilad Shalit, a captured Israeli soldier, failed.

Shalit was captured by Gaza groups in a 2006 cross-border raid.

Osama al-Muzaini, a Hamas official who is involved in the negotiations, said on Friday that the talks had shown little progress and that any claims by Israel that progress had been made were “election-motivated”.

“There has been no progress in the [Shalit] file for several months and that is because [Israel] remained unwilling to pay the price,” he told Reuters news agency.

Muzini was responding to a report published on the website of Israel’s Haaretz newspaper quoting unnamed Israeli officials as saying significant progress had been made in truce talks and Shalif’s freedom.

Muzaini did not mention where the talks had been held or who led the mediation.

Hamas has demanded the release of 1,400 prisoners in exchange for Shalit.

Muzaini said Israel had only agreed to 71 names from the list of 450 long-serving prisoners Hamas had proposed more than a year ago.

Al Jazeera English – Middle East – Israeli air strikes hit Gaza

Israeli aircraft late on Sunday targeted an empty police station in central Gaza and some seven tunnels along the Gaza Strip’s southern border with Egypt, witnesses said.

The action came two weeks after the end of an Israeli offensive that devastated the impoverished territory and left more than 1,300 Palestinians dead.

There were no reports of casualties in the latest strikes on the Hamas outpost and the tunnels, used for importing weapons and goods from Egypt into the Gaza Strip, where Israel enforces a punishing blockade.

The army confirmed carrying out strikes “in response to barrages of Qassam rockets and mortar shells fired at Israel.”

According to witnesses, hundreds of Palestinian workers involved in tunnel construction in southern Gaza fled to the Egyptian side of the border shortly after the bombing began.

Palestinian militants in Gaza fired more than 10 rockets and mortar rounds onto southern Israel on Sunday, wounding one civilian and two soldiers.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak said although most of the rockets were not fired by Hamas, the Islamist movement — which has controlled Gaza since June 2007 — bore the responsibility for the attacks.

“We are responding and we will continue to retaliate. We know that most of the fire was not carried out by Hamas but by other small organisations, but Hamas is responsible. Hamas must act to stop this.

“We need calm in the south, and that is the test…. If there is no calm we will have to act again,” Barak, who heads the centre-left Labour party in the upcoming February 10 elections, warned on public radio.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday vowed to deal “a severe and disproportionate Israeli response” to the new rocket fire.

The renewed air strikes come nine days before Israelis go to the polls.

Hamas slammed the Israeli threats as a “campaign stunt” before the election.

“This is an attempt… to destroy the Egyptian efforts to improve the calm,” spokesman Taher al-Nunu said in Gaza.

The Hamas spokesman did not say whether the Islamist group was behind the latest rocket fire, but called on “all groups to respect the national decision concerning the ground situation in Gaza.”

At least 15 rockets have been fired since mutual ceasefires by Israel and Hamas on January 18 brought an end to the 22-day war in which 13 Israelis also died.

Egypt has been leading international efforts to consolidate the ceasefires into a lasting truce.

To that end Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, whose rule is confined to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, is due to meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Monday in Cairo.

Abbas on Sunday accused Hamas, which routed forces loyal to him when it seized power in 2007, of putting Palestinian lives and their hopes for statehood in peril.

He also accused the Islamists of trying to smash the Palestine Liberation Organisation and said he rejected talks with any group which did not recognise the PLO.

Khaled Meshaal, who heads Hamas’s politburo from exile in Damascus, said earlier in the week that the PLO had become obsolete and called for “a new, national authority.”

His comments were not supported by Hamas-allied militants, who said the PLO should be reformed rather than replaced.

Meshaal on Sunday ruled out any permanent ceasefire until Israel ends a crippling blockade it imposed on Gaza after the Islamists seized power.

But an Israeli official said the Jewish state “is not ready to adhere to any agreement that has a time-limit. We want a deal that will be valid for as long as the sides respect it.”

AFP: Israel threatens more Gaza strikes

There were no reports of injuries from the predawn Israeli strike in the town of Rafah, along Gaza’s border with Egypt. Witnesses and Hamas Islamists said a metal foundry was damaged.

Moments earlier, a militant group with links to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement claimed responsibility for firing a rocket at southern Israel late on Wednesday.

The rocket was the first fired from Gaza since Israel and Hamas called separate ceasefires ending a 22-day Israeli offensive on Jan. 18.

It caused no casualties, but Israeli leaders facing a Feb. 10 election in a campaign focussed on security concerns, have vowed to respond to rocket salvoes its offensive in Gaza had aimed to curtail.

Israel has said it will hold Gaza’s Hamas rulers responsible for all attacks launched from the coastal territory, and had warned of a stronger response to the killing of a soldier on Tuesday in an explosion by a Gaza border fence.

“Israel will respond very severely,” an Israeli security source said on Wednesday, and added, “we haven’t seen it all,” referring to the Israeli air strikes carried out earlier in the day on tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.

“We will remain ready, with our finger on the trigger around the clock,” Benjamin Ben-Eliezer of Israel’s decision-making security cabinet said in remarks televised on Wednesday.

Hamas defended Tuesday’s bombing, citing the killing of two Palestinians by Israel last week. Israeli forces killed one Palestinian, identified by Gaza medical workers as a farmer after the bombing and later wounded a militant on a motorcycle.

VIOLENCE CLOUDS U.S. ENVOY VISIT

The violence clouded a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama’s Middle East envoy, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, who said in Jerusalem on Wednesday it was “of critical importance that the ceasefire be extended and consolidated” with respect to Israel and Gaza.

Mitchell met Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defence Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday and will meet Abbas on Thursday.

Western diplomats said Mitchell would not meet Hamas, a group shunned by the U.S. and Europe for it refusal to recognise Israel.

Mitchell said on Wednesday any durable truce between Israel and Hamas must end smuggling into Gaza and reopen border crossings controlled by Israel to relieve its economic blockade of the enclave where half the 1.5 million people depend on food aid.

He cited a U.S.-brokered 2005 agreement calling for forces loyal to Abbas to be deployed in Gaza. Hamas seized Gaza from Abbas’s forces in 2007, a year after the Islamists won a parliamentary election.

“President Obama has said the United States is committed to Israel’s security and to its right to defend itself against legitimate threats,” Mitchell said.

“The president has also said the United States will sustain an active commitment toward reaching the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security,” he added.

Olmert told Mitchell Israel would object to reopening any crossings with Gaza save to permit the flow of vital aid to the territory, until an Israeli soldier captured in 2006 was freed, an Israeli official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“We don’t intend to open the crossings before Gilad Shalit returns home,” Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli cabinet minister said, referring to the soldier seized by Gaza militants in a cross-border raid.

Israeli leaders fear Hamas could rebuild tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border to replenish an arsenal of rockets used in attacks on its southern communities that disrupt life for tens of thousands of citizens.

Some 1,300 Palestinians, including at least 700 civilians, were killed in the offensive, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip said. Israel put its death toll in the war at 10 soldiers and three civilians.

Israel strikes in Gaza as Obama envoy holds talks | Reuters

Residents near the town of Rafah fled as missiles hit tunnels through which Israel says militants smuggle arms.

The strikes came ahead of US envoy George Mitchell’s visit to promote a permanent Israel-Hamas ceasefire.

Both sides declared ceasefires on 17 and 18 January to end Israel’s three-week offensive on Gaza.

The land, air and sea assault killed about 1,300 Palestinians, including 400 children. Thirteen Israelis died.

It is not clear whether there were any casualties from the airstrikes, but the latest violence is a sign of just how fragile the truce is, says the BBC’s Bethany Bell in Jerusalem.

Push for peace

Israel had responded to Tuesday’s roadside bomb – which killed one soldier and wounded three – by immediately sending troops and tanks into Gaza backed by helicopters.

Ensuing fighting around the town of Khan Younis and the Kissufim border crossing left one Palestinian dead, medical sources said.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert threatened further strikes, saying the incursion was merely an initial reaction and that Israel’s full response was still to come, Haaretz newspaper reported on its website.

Both Mr Mitchell and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana are in the region to push for peace talks.

Mr Mitchell, newly appointed by US President Barack Obama, is to hold talks with Mr Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, although correspondents say he is not expected to meet Hamas officials.

He has already held talks in Cairo about Egypt’s mediation efforts.

Israeli and Palestinian faction representatives have visited Cairo for talks with Egyptian officials since the ceasefires came into effect.

Hamas wants an end of Israel’s punishing blockade of Gaza. Israel wants a long-term ceasefire and curbs on Hamas rearming.

During Mr Mitchell’s visit, Israelis will want to hear what ideas the US has for advancing the peace process, as well as how Washington will tackle the Iranian nuclear issue, our correspondent says. But with Israeli elections due to take place in two weeks, it is likely the US envoy will spend much of his time listening, as Mr Obama has asked him to do, our correspondent adds.

Mr Mitchell’s visit is being seen by many Israelis as a sign of US engagement, and by others as a sign of pressure.

Tunnels working

The Gaza Strip’s southern frontier is peppered with tunnels into Egypt that were pummelled by air-strikes during Israel’s offensive.

One of Israel’s stated goals was to halt the smuggling of weapons – including rockets that were being fired against Israeli towns – into the coastal enclave through the network of tunnels.

But smuggling resumed shortly after the non-negotiated cease-fires were declared.

Residents along the border say food, fuel and other goods are moving through the several dozen tunnels that are still operational.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Israeli jets target Gaza tunnels

John Ging, head of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza, called for new U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell to talk to ordinary people in Gaza as part of a “new track” in diplomacy.

U.S. President Barack Obama named Mitchell, a former U.S. Senator who helped settle the conflict in Northern Ireland, on Thursday to try to jump-start Arab-Israeli peace talks.

“My first request to the U.S. administration is talk to the ordinary people in Gaza. Come to Gaza and talk to the ordinary people — the mothers, fathers, leaders of civil society, the people who are not involved in politics,” Ging, speaking from Gaza, told reporters in Geneva.

“They are still quite shell-shocked but there is more and more anger growing.”

It is urgent to establish accountability for death and the destruction of Palestinian infrastructure through a credible mechanism which would “channel this emotion to confidence in the rule of law,” Ging said.

“The extremists here — there are more now at the end of this conflict than there were at the start, that’s the product of such conflict — are very confident in their rhetoric that there should be no expectation that justice will be delivered through the rule of law. Now we must prove that wrong,” he said.

The investigation had to examine “legitimate allegations” on both sides, as Israeli civilians had also suffered, he said.

“But it is a challenge we must succeed in achieving. Because if we don’t, then we have truly conceded to the agenda of the extremists here in Gaza,” he added.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said he expected Israel to provide urgently a full explanation of attacks on U.N. facilities in Gaza, including schools used as shelters, and said those responsible must be held accountable.

Israeli attacks killed 1,300 people and made thousands homeless in the 22-day assault which Israel said was to stop Hamas firing rockets at southern Israel. Hamas and Israel declared ceasefires on Sunday and Israel has withdrawn.

Ging, who is Irish, welcomed Mitchell’s appointment.

“An individual of his experience and ability coming now to this conflict gives me cause for more than hope, it actually gives me cause for optimism that we will move on to a new track where we will see real progress,” he said.

“What we hope will happen is that the U.S. administration will listen to the people. There has to be a rebalancing of the focus,” he said.

War boosted extremists in Gaza, says U.N. official | International | Reuters

The government argues that overwhelming victory in the field will advance what was Operation Cast Lead’s primary goal: bringing a long period of quiet to civilians in southern Israel, freeing them from the tyranny of cross-border rocket attacks from Gaza.

But critics on the right say the government did not go far enough.

They maintain that it had a golden opportunity to topple the Hamas regime, which the government let slip by stopping the fighting too soon. Right wingers also are skeptical about whether Egypt and other members of the international community will be able to keep their commitments to prevent the rearmament of Hamas in Gaza.

Meanwhile, critics on the left say the fighting went on too long, that its relatively modest goals could have been achieved much earlier and that the large number of Palestinian civilian casualties, deplorable in and of itself, will hurt Israel’s international standing and breed a new generation of Palestinian fanatics unwilling to make peace on any terms.

Jerusalem hoped to achieve its goal of quiet for southern Israel by destroying as much of Hamas’ military infrastructure as possible, preventing it from being replaced and creating a new deterrent equation to make Hamas think twice before provoking Israel again.

Judged by these standards, the war seems to have been an outstanding success.

The IDF achieved both strategic and tactical surprise. Hamas did not expect anything like the ferocity of the Israeli onslaught; it was caught on the first day unprepared for war, and it was surprised again later when the IDF was able to jam remote control devices meant to detonate scores of booby-trapped buildings on advancing IDF soldiers.

During the fighting, more than 500 militiamen were killed and the vast majority of Hamas weapons’ stores and rocket manufacturing workshops were destroyed – including dozens of medium-range Grad rockets supplied by Iran.

Israeli military intelligence says the IDF’s performance in the war, its firepower, relatively low human losses, accurate intelligence, and pinpoint coordination between air, ground and naval forces, has gone a long way toward restoring Israeli deterrence — not only with regard to Hamas, but in the Middle East as a whole.

The message this sends is two-fold: To the radical Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas axis, it warns not to take Israel lightly, and to the moderate, pro-Western Egypt-Jordan-Saudi Arabia camp, the message is to be bolder in confronting extremist rejectionists.

The war also leaves Hamas facing a huge dilemma: whether to spend the meager resources it has on acquiring new weapons, how to smuggle them into Gaza if it decides to buy them, and whether to risk another massive Israeli retaliation if it uses them.

“I don’t think they will do it again soon, and if they do they will be hit hard again,” Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said.

The Israeli government is also confident that a string of new agreements with Egypt, the Europeans and the United States on blocking arms traffic into Gaza will prove effective.

Officials say there is a new seriousness to do so on the part of Egypt, which has both regional and domestic reasons for wanting to keep Hamas weak. The Egyptians have no desire to see the long arm of their bitter regional foe Iran being strengthened on their doorstep, nor do they want to see further showdowns between Israel and Hamas. Such confrontations inflame Egyptian public opinion and strengthen domestic Islamic opposition led by the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is an ideological offshoot and ally.

Until now, the Egyptians have failed to stop local Bedouin and others from conducting lucrative arms trades through the Sinai desert, and in tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border.

As they approached Gaza, the Bedouin, who were paid enormous sums by Hamas, often would bribe Egyptian border guards to let them through. The question is whether the government in Cairo will find ways to arrest this deeply embedded practice.

The Americans and the Germans have offered Egypt state-of-the art equipment to detect smuggling tunnels and pick up would-be smugglers. The United States and some of the European countries — notably Britain, France, Germany and Italy — want to cut off the arms even before they reach Egypt.

They are offering to patrol the high seas to intercept any potential arms shipments from Iran to Egypt or directly to Gaza. In Washington last week, Livni signed a new memorandum of understanding with the United States on arms smuggling. A secret appendix talks about close intelligence cooperation on Iranian maritime movements. The memorandum also specifically gives Israel the go-ahead to attack smuggling tunnels along the border if all other efforts to stop the flow of arms from Egypt into Gaza fail.

Six key European leaders — from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Czech Republic – came to Jerusalem on Sunday in a remarkable show of support for Israel. Their backing for the Jewish state was at least partly a public statement of their recognition of the fact that they and Israel are on the same side when it comes to fighting Iranian-inspired Islamic terror.

This, despite the fact that, in most cases, the media and the public in their home countries have been strongly critical of the widespread destruction and heavy civilian casualty rate in Gaza caused by Israel in the war.

Egypt, which hosted the six leaders earlier in the day, has emerged as the main regional victor in the crisis. It brokered the new Hamas-Israel cease-fire, is taking on a major role against arms smuggling and is pressing Hamas and the more moderate Fatah organization, which runs the Palestinian Authority, to establish a national unity government to rebuild Gaza and talk peace with Israel.

Whether Gaza is rebuilt with Western, Arab or Iranian money, by Fatah or by Hamas, could be crucial in shaping the political orientation of its beleaguered people.

Not surprisingly, the outcome of the war is also having a major impact on the Israeli election, which is just three weeks away.

During the war, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the architect of the war and leader of Israel’s Labor Party, saw his poll numbers rise at the expense of right-wing opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud. That delivered gains to Livni, who has been running a close second behind Netanyahu.

But with the fighting now over and criticism of the war gaining traction, the pendulum is swinging back toward Netanyahu and, even more so, to Avigdor Lieberman of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party.

Whichever side is able to dominate the narrative of the war’s outcome likely will determine who becomes Israel’s next prime minister.

Did Israel win the war against Hamas? | JTA – Jewish & Israel News