GAZA WAR ANALYSIS Hurray! We Lost! By Henryk M. Broder

Israel's war in Gaza is a military victory. But with 1,300 dead and thousands wounded, it is also moral defeat. The painful lesson: Israel can only defeat itself. Hamas leader Ismail Haniya only had to hide to emerge as the winner.

Israel finds itself in exactly this type of situation when it comes to Hamas. The Palestinians militants are never going to defeat the Israeli military. But the end of "Operation Cast Lead" has confirmed that Israel can lose to Hamas. By waging a war that has killed 1,300 Palestinians and wounded several thousand, Israel has not only succeeded in turning global public opinion against itself; it has also invited sanctions that will be much heavier than a few negative editorials in the New York Times or the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

In response, the military has begun preparing dossiers for each piece of property it destroyed in the war. It intends to use these documents to prove that the properties were legitimate targets. Among these properties were not only Hamas headquarters and arms caches, but also residential properties from which rockets were launched on Israel.