In case you feel sorry for those poor Palestinians: Gazans watch with pride as Hamas strikes Israel

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel's new offensive against the Gaza Strip has turned into a political bonanza for the territory's Hamas rulers, while sidelining Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, their Western-backed rival in the West Bank.

Gazans feeling unfairly attacked by Israel have been watching with gleeful pride as Hamas militants fire rockets deeper than ever into Israel and Arab leaders flock to previously isolated Gaza to show solidarity. Growing collateral damage from Israel's massive aerial bombardments of Hamas targets does not appear to have hurt the Islamists' sudden popularity.

Saed Moaserji, a 19-year-old engineering student from Gaza's Jebaliya refugee camp, said he felt intense pride after Hamas rocket squads for the first time this week targeted Jerusalem.

"I never liked Hamas, but I wished I could kiss the forehead of the one who fired the rocket on Jerusalem," Moaserji said Saturday, standing outside a local Hamas commander's two-story home that had just been flattened in an airstrike.

The support was in sharp contrast to recent months, when the Islamist group seemed to be flailing, riven by internal divisions over the direction of the movement and the refusal of Egypt's new government to lift a Gaza blockade imposed by Israel and the previous regime in Cairo after Hamas seized the territory in 2007.

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