Who knows better what’s going on in Gaza: the U.S. State Department, or the Israeli defense minister? The Jerusalem Post reports that

[t]he State Department is likely to convey its unhappiness regarding Israel’s Gaza policy to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when he arrives in Washington before dawn on Tuesday. His three-day visit will include a meeting with US President George W. Bush and a keynote address to the annual AIPAC policy conference.

“What we’re telling the Israelis is that the policy that was adopted after the summer [of June 2007] wasn’t working, of really closing the borders,” said a senior State Department official.

Yet Haaretz reports that

Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Monday said [to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee] that Israel has identified signs of distress coming from Hamas. According to the defense minister, some 70 Hamas fighters have been killed during the last two months, and more than 300 have been killed during the past six months.

“Hamas is very stressed. The most effective action is the siege,” Barak said, referring to the Israeli-imposed economic blockade on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

The explanation here must be that the State Department and the defense minister have different definitions of success: Barak wants to win; State wants . . . well, it’s probably better not to speculate.