TWO years ago, in Gaza City, an Israeli helicopter flew low, firing rockets. An announcement appeared not long after that the old and wheelchair-bound Sheik Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, had been killed. The Middle East was in an uproar. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, for example, made a bombastic speech, claiming that the destruction of Hamas was at hand.

Sheik Ahmed Yassin is no more, and Sharon is incapacitated by illness, but