Hamas comes out strong politically after the Israeli Prime Minister waged war against them…
And Bibi loses his job to boot….
For 11 days last month, Israel unleashed a punishing barrage on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, collapsing tunnels, exploding arsenals and killing fighters. But through it all, Hamas continued to arc more than 4,000 rockets into Israel, terrorizing residents of Tel Aviv and other cities.
That performance has earned Hamas newfound admiration among Palestinians not only in Gaza, which it governs, but also crucially in the West Bank, where Israel, the United States and archrival Fatah have long sought to ban the militant Islamist group from operating. Despite the prohibition, Palestinians waved Hamas flags and chanted the group’s slogans during demonstrations across the occupied territory last month — scenes that had no precedent in recent years.
The surge in Hamas’s popularity has been matched by the plummeting fortunes of the Palestinian Authority, whose president, Mahmoud Abbas, was widely panned — even among fellow Fatah members — for his limp response to Israeli attacks. The fighting, which erupted when Hamas began firing rockets into Israel and then escalated as the Israeli military took the opportunity to strike a vast inventory of targets across the Gaza Strip, left 232 Palestinians dead, including at least 65 children, officials said. A dozen people died in Israel, two of them children….