16-Jul-14: The jihadists of Hamas want this battle to go on though it's going disastrously for them. Why?

Hamas political head Khaled Mashaal in his luxurious (and safe) Gulf state boudoir [Image Source]

The Washington Post's editorial board ask the question that troubles many Israelis as the IDF continues to pound the Gaza Strip and as the jihadists fire more and more of the thousands of rockets stored in their repositories deep within the civilian infrastructure of their cities:

Hamas’s military campaign against Israel has been a dismal failure... [so] why would Hamas insist on continuing the fight when it is faring so poorly? 

In "Hamas is playing a dangerous game with Gazan lives | The Post's View", published yesterday, they offer an answer. They say it's the only one that's plausible. They term it "stomach-turning"; most people would agree:

The Islamic movement calculates that it can win the concessions it has yet to obtain from Israel and Egypt not by striking Israel but by perpetuating the killing of its own people in Israeli counterattacks. More than 200 people, including a number of children, have already died in Gaza; Hamas probably calculates that more deaths will prompt Western governments to pressure Israel to grant Hamas’s demands.

The Washington Post editorial then takes a look at Israel's military values:

To its credit, Israel has used sophisticated technology, including targeted text messages and dummy warning missiles, to minimize civilian casualties. But innocent people will inevitably be killed in attacks on launchers and missile factories that are purposely placed in densely populated areas.

Whether that credit means anything or not, Israelis are now in the ninth wearying and frightening day of running to shelters, cleaning up the damage and worrying about children deployed at Gaza's gates awaiting orders. With each day, it becomes clearer that there's a limit to the patience of a population under fire and possessed of the technology and military power to carpet bomb the murder-minded zealots on the other side of the fence.

But try explaining that to a Hamas leadership the key members of which are hiding out in comfortable, air-conditioned Qatar and other Gulf state locations, and in bunkers buried safely and deeply below Gaza's mosques and hospitals.