Israelis were also killed. Strangely omitted from the piece. I understand that a significant number of Palestinian deaths resulted from the Israeli targeting munition stores and secondary explosions. I agree, the ceasefire can't endure. Of course there is disproportionate use of force, that is the hallmark of traditional armed forces engaging with terrorist forces.

Firing rockets into a neighbouring country is also against international law. Since January 2012, over 2,256 rockets have been launched at Israel from Gaza (Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon's remarks to the Security Council, UN Secretary General on 21st Nov 2012: for a break down by month see wikipedia). Israelis have been killed by those rockets; and those killed were also hapless civilians.

The Israeli government and its people do not base their actions on the assumption that the world is ready to sacrifice Israel, they base their actions on decades of aggressive militant action towards the state of Israel by Hamas, by Hezbollah, by Islamic Jihad and others.

If Hamas’ true objective is to achieve a viable, prosperous democratic Palestinian state, they will not succeed while they aim and fire rockets at the civilian population of Israel.

Israel has the right to defend itself and its citizens in the face of rocket attacks from Hamas and other groups in Gaza, just as Australia would, should 1000’s of rockets start landing in Melbourne. This is not a fictional narrative born of fantasy.

Also, to say that the ceasefire offer was a timely gift to help Israel save face, shows not only a naïve view of the political situation in the region, but also a real contempt for the lives and welfare of the Israeli and Palestinian civilians caught in the cross fire.

This is the most one-sided article I have yet read on this website and does nothing to illuminate the problem nor to further peace in the region.

Shahram, you write, 'missiles from Gaza (although their combat value has proven to be next to none).

For civilians to hear sirens going off all the time and knowing that a rocket could land on them is not to be dismissed. Sure, they will not destroy Israel, but it makes life intolerable. An average of three per day this year. And you say 'it's next to nothing'.

It's not all Israel's fault. I agree the settler problem is a serious, I wish they would leave, but I think the statement that Israel has no right to exist gives the religious nutters all the excuse they need to act like they do.

As a relatively ignorant observer of history & geography and hopefully as a relatively intelligent & logical Australian, can anyone explain to me the right answer to the question of who has the right to occupy Judea & Jerusalem & the surrounding lands of the levant?

If we go to historical precepts backed by archeological evidence, it looks like all coastal areas of the levant were originally occupied by Phonecians who I understand were the descendants of the Minoans of Crete. Therefore all of these lands should logically belong to Crete!

If we look at the more modern hard evidence, the Jerusalem Mosque is built on top of the Temple of the Jews, not the other way around. That means to me that the Jewish right to occupy is very simply demonstrated as being historically & archeologically the right answer.

I know that this opens a real 'can of worms' but let us put this all in the correct perspective and determine which group of people "started it all", accept that as the starting point for discussion and then argue the rights & wrongs of the current situation from that perspective.

If there's one thing Israel learned from the treatment of Jews in Europe (pogroms, ghettos, beatings, concentration camps, mass imprisonment), it is how to apply some of that treatment to others. They refused the opportunity to deal with Hamas as an overwhelmingly elected legitimate government, choosing to "negotiate" (walk all over) those on the West Bank while impounding the other half of the Palestinians behind the wall.
No matter what their assertions or beliefs, a legitimately elected government is accountable and capable of negotiation. That would not, however, accommodate Israel's agenda.
War is not the way to go. But if the Arab nations ever get their act together and flex some serious diplomatic muscle, we might find a bit of equilibrium in the matter.

This article perplexes me. How can we have a discussion of the prospects for peace in the region that considers the roles of and fallout for Israel, Iran, the US, Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood without speaking of the motivations, decisions and actions of one of the conflict’s central protagonists, namely, Hamas?

Mike Hansen: The bottom line is that all Hamas needs to do is delete or modify the first four clauses of its Charter so that it no longer calls for the destruction of Israel and the expulsion or extermination of all Israelis. Peace would come to Gaza with a vengeance!

Israel would re-open all its crossings including the sea and air! Subject to Hamas easing back on the Shariah strangle-hold on the people of Gaza, business and commerce would flourish and thrive immediately as it largely did between June 1967 and October 2000 (start of Intifada II). During the 1967-2000 epoch many thousands of Gaza Palestinians worked in Israel and there was thriving bilateral trade, commerce and deals between Israelis and Gaza Palestinians. Israelis and people like me had easy access to Gaza where, for example, we purchased the famous Gaza cane furniture...which we still treasure...and walked, ate, talked and laughed with our Gaza cousins. A flourishing economy, which Gaza did have before Hamas took over, would rapidly drop the unemployment rate to single digit figures.

In my own area of Medicine, there is still massive collaboration between Gaza and Israel ...and indeed seriously ill people from Gaza are frequently treated at top Israeli hospitals. Numerous Palestinians are trained in Medicine in Israel. If you doubt this, look up Hadassah, Tel Hashomer, Wolfson, Rabin and Sorroco hospitals, Sackler School of Medicine etc and check out my favourite charity, www.saveachildsheart.org. Better still, go visit Israel, sit in any hospital foyer and observe.

Re a Palestinian State, there could have already been one for 64 years had the Arabs agreed to the UN 1947 partition plan (but no ..they preferred to launch a war on the nascent Jewish state thinking that it would only take a few days to overrun the "gutless" and poorly equiped and trained Jews); there could also have been a State for 45 years had the Arabs not attacked Israel in 1967 (in fact nothing stopped them from establishing a State between 1948 and 1967!); there could also have been a Palestinian State for 12 years, had Arafat not rejected the Camp David/Taba Agreement....instead, the PLO preferred to launch Intifada II.

In fact the Palestinians, and Hamas in particular, wish to take the whole of historical Israel (termed "Palestine" by the Romans to punish the rebellious Jews in about CE 70...read Josephus the "Wars of the Jews").They might not succeed in achieving this goal without more devastating war, and the pityof it all is that they will not stop trying to destroy Israel!

William Bruce PS
Re your assertion "Lastly, to me the whole concept of the state of Israel is MAD & racist and barbaric....It ought be illegal to invade the unprotected minds of ALL children with religion" I agree with your last sentence, but why just limit it to tiny Israel (~ 8M people)? Furthermore, the majority of Jews in Israel are not religious. In contrast, Britain and most of its former colonies including Australia are partial theocracies...hence the Queen is "Defender of the Faith" (Protestant) and the Christian Church plays a key role in Aussie life. The USA has "In God we Trust" on every dollar bill. And about 1.2 Billion Miuslims live under Shariah law! In fact that the strangle hold on the Palestinians in Gaza is due in major part to Hamas, that is the Muslim Brotherhood which has imposed Shariah law on the Palestinians many of whom were liberal. And have you forgotten the religious based civil war in Syria (so far nearly 40, 000 killed) and the religious based turmoils in Egypt. So before you throw stones at Israel make sure that you are not surrounded by glass!

Left out of these conversations is the work that has been done on Palestinian and Jewish genomes in the last decade. Turns out the Palestinians are not Arabs, and the Jews are not European -- to a first approximation they are all Palestinians. Many Jews, and many Palestinians are more closely related to one another than either are to Europeans or Arabs. (This is hardly surprising to anyone who has friends from both groups -- they are in many cases indistinguishable in many respects.) They were apparently one Palestinian people until the Romans dispersed many of them 2000 years ago, and Desert Arabs conquered and "converted" some of them 1300 years ago. And because both the Jewish diaspora, and the Palestinians who stayed in Palestine, were both very diligent about not marrying outside their own group, both are heavily inbred, both carry a heavy genetic load as a result, and both preserve to a remarkable degree their original Palestinian genomic heritage. So they are now two peoples, in a fight to the death over scraps of land, that they inhabited as one people 2100 years ago. It's enough to make a grown man cry.