If I were the Israeli leadership, I would offer Hamas in Gaza a deal.

Declare a 72 hour bombing halt. Allow humanitarian aid to enter from Egypt, and restore fuel, water and power deliveries. If the Palestinians released all their Israeli and International hostages, I would declare the end of hostilities and go back to the way things were before. If they failed to do so after 72 hours, I would order a resumption of the bombing, restore the blockade and siege, and launch a ground invasion of the Northern half of the Gaza strip, with the aim of removing all Hamas’ military assets from within striking range of central Israel. I would then occupy it, fortify it, maybe even threaten to build settlements all over it.

This would cut the area of Gaza in half, doubling the population density of the southern part, and further isolate Hamas from the Israeli agricultural and industrial heartland. Let God and the Egyptians sort them out.

The blood debt of dead civilians would be paid, Israel would get its revenge and “save face”. Hamas would be faced with the choice of either going back to pretty much the way things were before, or be forced to do awful things to the hostages, which would only be bad press for them. Everyone’s been giving the Jews shit about their alleged bombing of the hospital, and no one seems to even mention the massacres and abductions of civilians Palestinian raiders inflicted on Israelis in the kibbutzes and farms around Northern Gaza. If the Israelis made this offer, the ball, for once, would be in Hamas’s court. They would have to explain to the world why they were continuing to carry out a conflict they could not possibly win. The people of Palestine might even elect a government whose charter didn’t insist on the destruction of Israel.

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, both sides have a lot to answer for in this conflict. But I would be a lot more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause if they restricted their rebel activity to the Israeli military and police. Blowing up discos and pizza parlors is a savage and barbaric act which accomplishes nothing except provoking reciprocal barbarism and savagery. As for the Israelis, I’m sick and tired of their claim that God promised that land to them. God never gave them shit; by their own Bible, they stole the land from the Canaanites by force, thousands of years ago, and they have no one to blame for losing it but Imperial Rome.