Richard Falk

The civilian population of Gaza are trapped in an overcrowded war zone with no form of exit. This situation reveals a serious gap in international humanitarian Law.

As the hideous Israeli assault on Gaza, named Operation Protective Edge, by the IDF enters its second week, overdue international appeals for a ceasefire fall on deaf ears. Bibi Netanyahu tells the world that no outside pressure will alter Israel’s resolve to reach its military and political goals to disable Hamas for the indefinite future. The purported justification for such aggression is to make sure this time that Israelis will never again have to seek shelter from Hamas rockets, which could require a prolonged military campaign combining ground forces with a continuing air and naval assault.

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Sam Kriss

To protect the world from devastation! To unite all peoples within our nation! To denounce the evils of truth and love! To extend our reach to the stars above! - Benjamin Netanyahu, address at the opening of the 2014 Knesset summer session

Imagine, if you dare, the sheer horror of living near an ideologically motivated amateur youth rocketry club. Something like the Socialist Youth Committee for Space Exploration, for instance, or the Young Tories Science Society. While at first it might be heartwarming to see teenagers developing an interest in politics and an involvement in practical physics, rather than indulging in their usual habits of playing violent video games all day or viciously cyberbullying each other to death, this would quickly grow tiring. The sudden bangs in the night, the scattered debris in the morning, the occasional terror as an errantly and implausibly airborne tin can goes screeching over your leafy suburb: it’s more than anyone could reasonably be expected to bear. Surely nobody would blame you if, after a few days of these potassium nitrate-powered hijinks, you and a few of your sensible middle-class neighbours got together to launch a combined military assault on the part of town where these kids hang out, killing them, their families, and several dozen others stupid enough to be in the area. It’s not that you’d get any particular pleasure from murdering all these people, but everybody deserves a decent night’s sleep.

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Gilad Atzmon

As the Israeli Cabinet announced earlier today that it accepted the Egyptian cease-fire offer, Palestinian freedom fighters in Gaza continued firing rockets targeting the whole of Israel.

The situation is clear. Israel is desperate for a break in the violence. In spite of its endless ‘bravado,’ and military might, Israel lacks the military capacity and the courage to encounter Palestinian resistance on the ground. The Israeli elite recognizes that the military can’t resolve the problem, if anything, its extensive use would diminish Israeli manoeuvrability on the international front.

Hamas, on the other hand, has won its biggest military, political and ideological victory to date - it has managed to deliver some elementary messages to all of Israeli society:

You are living on our Palestinian stolen land, our Right to Return is elementary and is not negotiable. You Israelis do not belong here, you never did, and you had better consider your options immediately.

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