This, in the situation room, is not a time for emotion. It is time for cold, hard analysis. Between the charred bodies, flattened towers and bundles of tiny corpses, an entire set of assumptions about the Middle East have collapsed. Israeli, American and our own. This will have enormous ramifications. Because Hamas was not what we thought it was, Israel is not what it thought it was and nor is the Middle East. Instead of being impregnable, it is clear how vulnerable and rundown by dysfunction the Jewish state really is.
From Pennsylvania Avenue to the Kirya headquarters of the IDF, this was the assumption about Hamas. The organisation is not Islamic State. Rather, like the PLO of old, it wants international recognition and after successive rocket wars there are finally signs it wants to get on with governing.
