The Israeli assault on Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, in Gaza will succeed physically, prove a mixed bag mentally and fail on the moral level of war. Hamas is militarily a pushover compared to Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite Party of God in southern Lebanon, which makes the David vs. Goliath nature of the conflict all the more evident. The stronger the contrast, the worse the outcome for Goliath -- the Israeli state and its conventional army.

The fact that the timing of the Gaza war, if not the event of the war itself, was driven by Israeli electoral politics, with the Israeli general election coming on Feb. 10, only makes the moral picture even grimmer. Add in that, absent a deal, Hamas' rocket fire against Israeli towns and cities will continue, and we see the makings of a debacle for Israel.

Some may see the assault on Gaza as Israel selecting the "Hama option" that Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld has discussed, but I do not agree. Choosing the Hama option would mean subjecting Gaza to a World War I-style bombardment, with tens of thousands of Palestinians killed and the rest fleeing into Egypt for their lives. Gaza would be largely flattened, as was the Syrian city of Hama by Syrian President Hafez al-Assad's armed forces in 1982. Instead, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have fallen between the two stools of the Hama option on the one hand and de-escalation on the other, and both of them have shown an indecision that guarantees failure.

When the dust settles from the Gaza conflict that ended this weekend, I expect Hamas to emerge bloodied but stronger.

Hamas will continue to control Gaza. Its support on the West Bank will soar -- right before elections are due to be held there, too. And the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas, the successor to Yasser Arafat, will look more like a stooge than ever.

Strategically, the most important result of the three-week conflict that began right at the new year will be the further weakening of the legitimacy of the Egyptian government, which is bad news for U.S. interests in the Middle East.

On another front, the seeming quiet between India and Pakistan is deceptive. I expect an out-of-the-blue strike by India on Fourth Generation War training camps in Pakistan, a Pakistani defeat and possibly a collapse of the Pakistani government in consequence. How many collapses of governments Pakistan can endure before the state itself crumbles is a key strategic question. The answer, I suspect, is not many more. Pakistan could offer Islamic Fourth Generation War forces an earth-shaking victory in 2009.

(Part 2: Why the United States and its allies will continue to lose in Afghanistan in 2009.)

(William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion, is director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation.)

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