After 29 days of fighting during Operation Protective Edge, both sides — Israel and Hamas — declared victory.

Hamas boasted the victory of the "resistance" — muqawwamah. The first to congratulate the organization was senior Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh, who on Aug. 5 released a recorded message but has yet to be seen in public. Other Hamas spokespersons — Khalil al-Hayya, whose son was killed during the operation and who has just left the bunker, and Sami Abu Zuhri who, throughout the fighting, gave interviews to the media from a compound at Al-Shifa Hospital — claimed that Israel was defeated by the resistance. Once again, they claimed, the resistance succeeded in defending the Palestinian people.

Israel, by contrast, claimed that Hamas was dealt a very serious blow. Addressing the residents of the Gaza periphery, chief of staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz said the following: "I'm convinced that the residents of the Gaza periphery can return to their homes, work the fields and resume their good quality of life in the same manner as before."

But at the end of the 72-hour lull and well before the dust settled, Hamas turned the chief of staff's statement into a major embarrassment. Not only did the slogan "quiet will be met by quiet," which Israel coined at the beginning of the operation, become an object of ridicule, but it was also interpreted by Hamas as a sign of weakness.