A final solution for Hamas?

Blood, death, mutilation, destruction, missiles, corpses, hospitals and morgues overflowing, dead children, bombs falling on mosque and university ... 300 deaths including 50 civilians, 1,000 wounded ...

What are the Israelis really trying to achieve in Gaza?

1) To wipe out Hamas, which controls Gaza, along with its infrastructure, resources, institutions, agencies (such as police), and its ability to deliver any services to the people of Gaza.

2) To teach the people of Gaza a lesson: don't vote for the wrong side (Hamas won a general election in Gaza two years ago). A blockade doesn't seem to have done the trick: perhaps a few days of devastation will.

3) To stop the extremists in Gaza from firing rockets wildly into southern Israel, whether the culprits are under Hamas's control or not.

Why now?

1) Because Israel has an election in a month or so, which at present the hardline Likud leader Binyamin Netanhayu seems likely to win. The ruling Kadima party therefore has to show that it can be stronger and more hardline, more capable of protecting the homeland and punishing the Palestinians, than anyone else.

2) Because George W. Bush only has a month left in office. He won't say a word to stop the violence, but Barack Obama may not be so partisan, despite his declarations of support for Israel.

3) Because enough momentum has built up in Israel to secure public support for a savage collective revenge.

Will it work?

1) Of course not. Israel will "win", but in doing so it will stoke the anger in Gaza and across the Arab world, give the spiral of violence another good whirl, and put peace even further out of reach than it was before. 

2) In terms of killing as many people as possible and wrecking anything to do with Hamas, it will bring some brief satisfaction to Israelis who long for vengeance.

3) But in terms of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is a total waste of time and of life. It is a big step backwards.

So what's the point?

1) On the Israeli side, this blitz is a display of basic policy: the use of "overwhelming force" as a "solution" to problems with the Palestinians. It bolsters the Israeli right, and the extremists and fundamentalists who actually don't want to make peace, but to run the Palestinians into the sea.

2) Those missiles that are fired so regularly from Gaza into southern Israel: they create fear but do minimal damage. That's not the point of them: their function is to provoke the Israelis into exactly the sort of overkill that is now going on. The men who fire them are like suicide bombers: they are not afraid of dying, they are not afraid of devastation: life is cheap, and peace is not on their agenda. They want confrontation, they want it to spread, they want anger and overkill, they want the world to see why they hate the Jewish state. 

3) And the Israelis fall into the trap, just as they did in Lebanon last year. Once again they completely fail to see that "overwhelming force" is not a solution to anything. They learn nothing from history,  not even their own.