In the wake of the recent Israeli military operation in Gaza coded “Pillar of Defense” which killed 168 Palestinians, including 37 children and 14 women, as well as six Israelis, Hamas’ popularity has remarkably increased amongst Palestinians. Israel did not win in Gaza, and Hamas was not defeated. As Adam Shaltz exhaustively explains, Hamas “won an implicit recognition as a legitimate actor from the United States (which helped to broker the talks in Cairo) and achieved concrete gains, above all an end to targeted assassinations and the easing of restrictions on the movement of people and the transfer of goods at the crossings.”
While Hamas’ rockets fell in Israeli cities around the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority found itself in a predicament as Palestinians became unprecedentedly fed up and disillusioned with the PA’s negotiation-based policy. The PA had long before realized the U.S. had failed to make good on its promises to grant the Palestinians a state on 1967 borders. The PA has been left completely isolated in the face of its rival’s growing popularity.