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| Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: As his "True Self." (Illustration by Ronald David Jackson) |
By JODI RUDOREN
Ismail Haniya, the top Hamas leader in Gaza, worked the crowd in what used to be the Boura neighborhood of this battered northern border town, kissing the cheeks of elders and the foreheads of masked fighters. He waved at the women standing in front of makeshift huts next to the homes flattened in Israeli attacks, as children watched from atop concrete piles where green Hamas flags were planted as though on conquered lands.
“These buildings were the gates to the victory,” Mr. Haniya told one resident during the tour Tuesday afternoon.
More than a week after an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire agreement halted 50 days of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, little has changed on the ground. Electricity is still scarce, residents have to line up to collect clean water, and there is no word when the promised materials for reconstruction might arrive, in what quantities and under whose supervision.
But Hamas, the militant Islamist faction that ruled Gaza for seven years and led the battle against Israel, has already handed out more than $40 million in $2,000 payments to each family whose home was hit, according to Mousa Abu Marzook, a Hamas official based in Cairo who accompanied Mr. Haniya on the tour. Having given up official control of Gaza’s ministries in June to a new Palestinian government that has yet to take hold here — a picture of Mr. Haniya, a former prime minister, still hangs in the office of the education chief — Hamas paradoxically seems to be politically in its strongest position in years.
Polls show an unprecedented spike in popular support because of the war without, so far, people blaming Hamas for the devastation left behind. Leaders spent the last days doing victory laps, meeting with families of the fallen and touring the wreckage. In separate interviews, they repeatedly shrugged off questions about what happens next, saying “let’s wait and see” as if in a refrain.
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