The Latest from Israel-Palestine-Gaza (25 January)

Later Updates: The Latest from Israel-Palestine-Gaza (26 January)
Earlier Updates: The Latest from Israel-Palestine-Gaza (24 January)
Latest Post: How Israel Helped Spawn Hamas

11:15 p.m. Finally, Some White Smoke. After talks in Cairo today, Hamas official Ayman Taha said his organisation is offering a one-year cease-fire to Israel.

This is just an opening move, however. The Hamas delegation has to confirm the 12-month offer with the organisation's leadership in Damascus, and it is linked to a full opening of Gazan borders. Israel's offer of an 18-month cease-fire, presented by the Egyptians to Hamas, held out only a partial opening of crossings.

10:45 p.m. Soft Power, Tehran Style. While aid to Gaza is held up by Israeli restrictions, Iran continues to further its political objectives with assistance. Speaker of the Parliament Ali Larijani said today that Iran will rebuild the Gazan Parliament destroyed by Israeli air raids.

9:30 p.m. While there were no concrete results from the Cairo talks, Egypt is publicly rushing away from Israel and towards "the Palestinians". In Brussels, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit appealed to Europeans to press Tel Aviv to ease the economic blockade, "I ask the European Union to do (things) very, very quickly to rebuild to help the Palestinians to get out of this crisis. We need to force the Israelis to negotiate and also tell them to open crossings and to give Palestinians a chance to live in a normal way."

Gheit's statement is more rhetoric than substance, however. Egypt is refusing to have foreign monitors on its side of the border, so it is effectively passing the buck to Israel, which is balking at an arrangement on the Gazan side.

Meanwhile, some Europeans are still stuck on the old script of the Palestinian Authority's triumphant re-entry into Gaza. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband proclaimed, ""The reunification of the Palestinians under the recognised and cherished voice of President Abbas is so important."



6:35 p.m. No significant news from the talks in Cairo with Hamas and Fatah delegations. Egyptian officials have issued a holding statement that  "Egyptian efforts to consolidate the ceasefire, reach a [permanent] truce, reopen Gaza crossings and resume Palestinian national dialogue" were discussed.

6:10 p.m. As expected, Israel's Cabinet has approved a measure providing legal protection to its military officers if they are accused of war crimes over the Gaza conflict.

5:15 p.m. Propaganda of the Day. Uzi Mahnaimi, who writes from Tel Aviv for the Times, trumpets, "An American naval taskforce in the Gulf of Aden has been ordered to hunt for suspicious Iranian arms ships heading for the Red Sea as Tehran seeks to re-equip Hamas."

That's not news --- we posted this days ago --- but then Mahnaimi is not a reporter in any meaningful sense of the day. Instead, he's a channel for Tel Aviv's "information" line, which in this case is ramping up the campaign against Iran.

Thus Mahnaimi states that a US ship intercepted a "former Russian vessel" and held it for two days --- again, not news, as we noted the incident when it occurred earlier this week --- and adds, "According to unconfirmed reports, weapons were found." Very unconfirmed: the former Russian vessel had artillery, which Hamas does not use, and no further arms were found when it was searched in report.

Of course, this doesn't stop Mahnaimi, who tosses in the Israeli suspicion that two Iranian destroyers, sent to help fight piracy off the Somalian coast, are part of a scheme to run weapons to Gaza. And he has more:

Iran plans to ship Fajr rockets with a 50-mile range to Gaza. This would bring Tel Aviv, its international airport and the Dimona nuclear reactor within reach for the first time.

Of course, Iran may be supplying weapons to Hamas but this story is Israeli-inspired misinformation, of value to Tel Aviv's political schemes but worthless for any analysis of the aftermath of the Gaza conflict.

3:30 p.m. Osama Hamdan, the Hamas representative in Beirut, has issued a defiant statement about the attempt to block arms shipments to Gaza: "We will continue to get weapons into Gaza and the (West) Bank. Let nobody think we will surrender to measures. Perhaps matters will get more difficult, but we are ready to ride out any difficulty ... so that the resistance continues."

Hamdan added that those who think monitoring can detect the movement of weapons through tunnels "are deluded".

11:15 a.m. Rafah Kid has posted a series of new photos from Jabaliya with the note, "It's a mess here."

11 a.m. From the diary of Mohammad Dawwas, reprinted in The Independent of London:

22 January: I went to the burns department in Shifa hospital. I've never seen anything like this in my life. These phosphorus burns. Their bodies were black. One person has stitches everywhere. It's worse than killing people. They look like the living dead. I also went to the north, to Beit Lahiya. This was one of the most beautiful areas of farmland. Now it's gone, you can't recognise the place. I wanted to cry.

10:05 a.m. More on the aid front: Iran has established a Gaza Reconstruction Headquarters to "build 1,000 houses, 10 schools and five mosques, and reconstruct 500 shops, a hospital and a university".

10 a.m. Hamas has begun distribution of $52 million of aid in Gaza, with families receiving $1300 for each member killed and $650 for each wounded. The Observer of London has a lengthy background article.

Morning update (9:20 a.m. Israel/Gaza time): Important talks in Cairo today with Hamas and Fatah delegations on issues such as the manning of the border crossings. Hamas representatives will meet the head of Egyptian intelligence, Omar Suleiman, who met with an Israeli envoy on Thursday.

As we noted yesterday, if Hamas and Fatah agree on an arrangement in which some Gazan-based members of the Palestinian Authority join the border force, along with guards from European Union countries and Turkey, it will throw a difficult choice back at Israel. Tel Aviv will either to hold out, maintaining its stranglehold on aid and the Gazan economy, or ease its policy on the crossings.

The Israeli Invasion of Gaza: Rolling Updates (18 January)

Earlier updates: The Israeli Invasion of Gaza (17 January)
Latest Post: Hello? Gaza is Not Tehran

1 a.m. Last night we closed with: "At the very least, I’m grateful that there has been a cessation of violence in Gaza. My concern is that we’re at the start of a different phase which will not bring resolution but further hardship."

More of the same tonight. Today has been for mourning rather than dying --- only one death from violence to my knowledge, while close to 100 bodies have been pulled from the rubble. There appears to be a very gradual Israeli pullback from the edges of the cities as they re-trench in their military occupation.

The politics today was posturing, as a lot of leaders tried to figure out how to respond to Israel's unilateral "cease-fire". The Europeans appear to be paralysed, as they await a President Obama, while Egypt's Hosni Mubarak is scrambling to save his personal position. The Saudis have gone into hiding.

That means that the diplomatic baton --- perhaps unexpectedly, if you scripted this a month ago --- passes to Syria and other countries pursuing a stronger line in favour of Hamas. They will be at the Arab countries' economic summit in Kuwait tomorrow, and it will be interesting to see how forthright they take their position to Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The main question remains: how long will Israel hold out with its re-occupation in the hope that Hamas will crumble?

Good night and peace to all.



12:30 a.m. United Nations official Chris Gunness has told Al Jazeera that 53 UN installations have been destroyed or damaged in the Gaza conflict.

12 midnight: The "other" emerging regional bloc in this conflict, with Syria as the Arab country in the lead and including Turkey and Iran, took a back seat to the Sharm el-Sheikh summit today. Tomorrow, however, all Arab states are at an economic summit in Kuwait, and you can expect manoeuvring to take the lead in the discussions over Gaza. So this comment from Syrian leader Bashir al-Assad, made on Friday at the Qatar mini-summit, might be noteworthy:

We will take care to remind our children of the Gaza slaughter. We will save the pictures of the children of Gaza with their wounds and blood, and we will teach our children that the strong believer is better than the weak. We will teach them: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and he who started it is the more unjust. What is taken by force will not be returned but by force.

11:25 p.m. And now Political Quick Move of the Day: apparently Bono, while performing at the Inaugural Concert for President-elect Barack Obama, just shouted out for "a Palestinian dream". As an observer noted, "Oy, the Israelis are not going to like that." (Obama, having promised not to issue any meaningful statements on Gaza until Tuesday, will react in 36 hours.)

11 p.m. Dropping objectivity for a moment to offer the Horrific Propaganda Story of the Day:

The Israeli Consulate has Twittered proudly that "Israel Opens Field Clinic at Gaza Border to Treat Palestinian Wounded": "One Palestinian woman was already being treated in the clinic eight-bed clinic that includes a pharmacy, an X-ray machine and five consultation rooms."

Hmm, this feels like offering a fella a Band-Aid after you've beaten him to a pulp. I guess it would be churlish of me to note that it would take 650 of these clinics for all the wounded from the conflict. And even more churlish to note that a lot of wounded died in the last three weeks because of appalling conditions in hospitals and Israel's bombing and shelling of medical services.

8:45 p.m. The video report of the demolition of houses and killing of at least 14 in Khuza'a is now posted on YouTube.

8 p.m. Israel military sources say to Al Jazeera and Reuters, "I can confirm that a gradual withdrawal of our forces is under way," but it is unclear how many troops are involved and how far they are pulling back. Eyewitnesses are reporting some Israeli units are moving back from edge of Gaza City, and Israeli television is showing images of tanks re-crossing border from Gaza.

Israeli military says 19 rockets fired into Israel today.

7:30 p.m. Speaking of Rafah Kid, he has video on his website of the mass killing at Khuza'a, which an article today in The Observer exposed today as a possible Israeli war crime.

7:25 p.m. Rafah Kid offers a pertinent twist on the formula, put forth at today's Sharm el-Sheikh summit, of a "secure Israel and a viable Palestine":

Ha! Imagine if written like this --- "viable Israel and a secure Palestine". Because that's the paradox that is the cause of this mess.

7:20 p.m. More than 90 bodies found today in rubble in Gaza.

4:30 p.m. Further from the Sharm al-Sheikh summit: not much of significance. Notable that King Abdullah of Jordan talked about need for Europe and US to revive the peace process but did not refer to an Arab country apart from Egypt. And United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon made a speech that was so relevant that British and Spanish Prime Ministers Brown and Zapatero could be seen laughing and chatting about other matters.

4:25 p.m. Al Jazeera's Mouin Rabbani: "This war, perhaps more than any other event in the last decade or so, has transformed peace into a dirty word and has transformed negotiations into an even dirtier word. And resistance, which had been very much a dirty word in the last 15 words, is now the word and the concept which is increasingly on the lips of the people in this region."

4:20 p.m. Al Jazeera's Mouin Rabbani has just roasted Mubarak, Sarkozy, and Brown: "I'm speechless that in 2009, you can have a major international gathering to discuss the Israel-Palestine conflict and have a whole series of keynote speeches in which the word 'occupation' is not mentions even once."

4:13 p.m. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who oftens play the aid card at international conferences, starts with a pledge to treble Britain's humanitarian aid to Gaza. That step, however, rests on Israeli goodwill towards aid distribution in Gaza, and Brown can only blather --- after a name-check to "President Obama" --- Europe must ensure political settlement to ensure "secure Israel and a viable Palestine".

4:10 p.m. French President Nicolas Sarkozy follows Mubarak. He initially emphasises the deal with Israel to stop arms shipments to Gaza but then delivers a stinger to Tel Aviv: "Israel should state immediately and clearly that, when rocket fire stops, the Israeli army will leave Gaza. There is no other solution for peace."

It looks like Israel may have unilaterally put itself into isolation over political and military issues in Gaza.

4 p.m This could be fun: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak just opened the Sharm el-Sheikh conference and, after the platitudes, told Israel to "get stuffed" on any ideas of an international force monitoring the Egypt-Gaza border from the Egyptian side: "Egypt will never accept a foreign force." Mubarak also invoked an "independent Palestianian state" without using the US and Israeli formula of the Palestinian Authority as the "legitimate Palestinian Government".

3:40 p.m. Another rocket reported to have hit Ashdod about 30 minutes ago.

3:20 p.m. A bit disturbing: Barack Obama either hasn't caught up with the plot or he is so cautious that he risks putting himself in a difficult position when he takes office on Tuesday: his spokesman says Obama "welcomes Israel's ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and is committed to helping Israelis and Palestinians work toward peace".

Unlike the Bush Administration and Condoleezza Rice's statement, which focused on the Cairo talks today and looked beyond Tel Aviv to put hope in a "true" internationally-arranged cease-fire, Obama is on the verge --- unintentionally or deliberately --- of tying himself to Israel.

3:07 p.m. Clarification on the Zeitoun atrocity: the number of "95 bodies" appears to have been a misstatement in the confusion as recovery efforts were disrupted by the advance of Israeli tanks. More than 100 people were in the al-Samouni compound; in addition to the more than 30 confirmed killed last week, at least 15 bodies have been recovered today and more are in the rubble.

3:05 p.m. Al Jazeera's Ayman Moyheldin: "It's going to take years to rebuild what has been destroyed in these 22 days."

2:45 p.m. An intriguing statement from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice which, despite Reuters' headline "US Welcomes Gaza Ceasefire", is far from a ringing endorsement.

Of course Rice did not criticise Tel Aviv, but she clearly looked beyond it when she said, "The goal remains a durable and fully respected ceasefire that will lead to stabilisation and normalisation in Gaza." In particular, Rice tried to boost the manoeuvres in Cairo today: "The United States commends Egypt for its efforts and remains deeply concerned by the suffering of innocent Palestinians. We welcome calls for immediate coordinated international action to increase assistance flows and will contribute to such efforts."

I suspect the US, like Egypt, has been a bit wrong-footed by Israel's unilateral move, and Washington is now trying to recover an international strategy towards Gaza and Hamas.

2:35 p.m. Al Jazeera's Ayman Moyheldin: "The destruction we are seeing is unimaginable." He says, "Streets have been bulldozed for kilometres", and building reduced to rubble.

2:30 p.m. An important move by Hamas: Ayman Taha has told Reuters that the Gazan organisation is ceasing fire for one week, giving Israel a chance to pull out of the territory.

2 p.m. The scale of the Zeitoun atrocity, which we noted last week, is becoming clear: medics report up to 95 bodies in the al-Samouni compound. Israeli tanks are in area, so ambulances, medical personnel, Al Jazeera's crew, and bystanders are fleeing.

1:50 p.m. Israeli military spokeswoman Amital Leibovich lays down Tel Aviv's line: "If Hamas chooses to still launch rockets, we'll answer back and we'll answer back harshly."

1:10 p.m. Israeli Government spokesman Mark Regev: "We can't talk about a timetable for withdrawal until we know the ceasefire is holding."

12:25 p.m. The first death of the "cease-fire": Gazan civilian killed by Israeli fire near Khan Younis.

11:35 a.m. The challenge to the Israeli strategy: The Observer of London offers this evaluation of Hamas, based on interviews with Gazans: "The organisation's prestige appears to have survived intact, and even emerged enhanced."

11 a.m. And The Observer of London is also preferring to look at issues beyond the "unilateral cease-fire":

Israel stands accused of perpetrating a series of war crimes during a sustained 12-hour assault on a village in southern Gaza last week in which 14 people died. In testimony collected from residents of the village of Khuza'a by the Observer, it is claimed that Israeli soldiers entering the village attempted to bulldoze houses with civilians inside; killed civilians trying to escape under the protection of white flags; opened fire on an ambulance attempting to reach the wounded; used indiscriminate force in a civilian area and fired white phosphorus shells.

10:50 a.m. The Independent of London is way off-script this morning, noting the cease-fire but leading with the headline: "'Tungsten bombs' leave Israel's victims with mystery wounds." Physicians, including the Norwegian doctor Erik Fosse who helped expose the scale of civilian casualties, detail the injuries suffered from dense inert metal explosive (DIME) weapons.

10:30 a.m. Al Jazeera's Ayman Moyheldin: 25 bodies found as Gazans dig through rubble.

10:16 a.m. Tel Aviv, attempting both to gloss its claimed victory and to turn the game back towards Iran, puts out the Hamas=Tehran line: "Israeli leaders say the pounding of Hamas dealt a blow to Iran, which Israel accuses of backing the Palestinian group, and to Hezbollah, the Shiite militia in Lebanon that fought Israel to a stalemate in 2006."

10:15 a.m. Israeli Army announces that it has launched airstrikes against sites for this morning's rocket launches.

9:50 a.m. While we think the Israeli strategy sought "regime change" in Gaza, there is another explanation: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert --- and this has been "Olmert's War" --- wanted a military victory to erase his failure in 2006 against Hezbollah. Aluf Benn in Ha'aretz sets this out, but adds, "Hamas' gains cannot be ignored: It has won international legitimacy and sympathy, and its forces still control the Gaza Strip."

9:35 a.m. Our colleague Rami Khouri to Al Jazeera: "There is no chance of any unilateral move by Israel having any success. It has to be a negotiated agreement that responds to the basic legitimate needs of both sides."

9:25 a.m. At least four rockets fired towards Sderot in southern Israel this hour. Machine-gun fire in Gaza on the ground, with constant overflights by Israeli planes.

9:20 a.m. Hamas advisor Ahmed Youssef: Israel still occupying and threatening Gaza so "we have to do something. This is not a treaty. This is not a peaceful initiative. This is nothing." If Israel withdrew, "of course" Hamas would halt operations.

Morning update (9:15 a.m. Israel/Gaza time): So Gaza awoke this morning to the "cease-fire" that isn't a cease-fire. Israel, unable to finish off Hamas militarily with a battle in the cities, now moves into a "Phase 4": Tel Aviv hopes either to finish off its Gazan enemy through further political and economic constriction or, if Hamas offers a suitable pretext through rocket fire or attacks on Israeli troops, re-starting more bombing and even more intensive ground operations.



The Israeli manoeuvre both tries to deflect growing international pressure against its Gazan strategy and to put the ball in Hamas' court. Does the Gazan leadership offer a clear sign that "resistance continues" through rocket attacks, inviting Tel Aviv to resume its military campaign, or does it sit back, hoping to win the political and diplomatic battle? The possible answer is an attempted balance between a limited number of rocket launches and a visible political campaign to free Gaza from its misery and re-occupation, but this may be difficult to achieve with the leadership so dispersed and, in some cases, operating out of hiding.

Ironically, the Israeli unilateral "cease-fire" may bring regional countries to the forefront of this crisis. Hamas needs support to withstand Tel Aviv's latest moves, and this could come from the emerging bloc led by Syria, Turkey, and Iran and supported by some Gulf countries.

Meanwhile, Egypt will try to fashion an alternative multi-national response today when it hosts leaders from the Palestinian Authority, European countries, and the United Nations, and representatives from the European Commission, Russia, and the US. (The sharp-eyed will notice that Jordan is the only other Arab country present. Saudi Arabia is staying away.) Those attending walk another tightrope: how closely do they follow Tel Aviv, for example with support for the initiative to block arms to Gaza, and how much distance do they keep given internal difficulties and the lack of a post-Hamas solution?

Gaza: Was the Israeli Attack Planned in June?

Months ago, as Israel prepared to unleash its latest wave of desolation against Gaza, it recognised that blasting Hamas and "the infrastructure of terror", which includes police stations, homes and mosques, was a straightforward task.

A reader from Turkey asks, "What is the main argument behind your view that the Israeli operations were already planned in June? Do you specifically mean the visit of Olmert to US on 2nd of June?"

I'm not sure if Olmert and the Bush Administration would have discussed the Israeli planning, but the following from Chris McGreal in The Observer of London is an excellent account both of the preparations for military operations and the information campaign to accompany them.



Why Israel went to war in Gaza

It is a war on two fronts. Months ago, as Israel prepared to unleash its latest wave of desolation against Gaza, it recognised that blasting Hamas and "the infrastructure of terror", which includes police stations, homes and mosques, was a straightforward task.

Israel also understood that a parallel operation would be required to persuade the rest of the world of the justice of its cause, even as the bodies of Palestinian women and children filled the mortuaries, and to ensure that its war was seen not in terms of occupation but of the west's struggle against terror and confrontation with Iran.

After the debacle of its 2006 invasion of Lebanon - not only a military disaster for Israel, but also a political and diplomatic one - the government in Tel Aviv spent months laying the groundwork at home and abroad for the assault on Gaza with quiet but energetic lobbying of foreign administrations and diplomats, particularly in Europe and parts of the Arab world.

A new information directorate was established to influence the media, with some success. And when the attack began just over a week ago, a tide of diplomats, lobby groups, bloggers and other supporters of Israel were unleashed to hammer home a handful of carefully crafted core messages intended to ensure that Israel was seen as the victim, even as its bombardment killed more than 430 Palestinians over the past week, at least a third of them civilians or policemen.

The unrelenting attack on Gaza, with an air strike every 20 minutes on average, has not stopped Hamas firing rockets that have killed four Israelis since the assault began, reaching deeper into the Jewish state than ever before and sending tens of thousands of people fleeing. Last night Israel escalated its action further, as its troops poured across Gaza's border, part of what appeared to be a significant ground invasion. And a diplomatic operation is already in full swing to justify the further cost in innocent lives that would almost certainly result.

Dan Gillerman, Israel's ambassador to the UN until a few months ago, was brought in by the Foreign Ministry to help lead the diplomatic and PR campaign. He said that the diplomatic and political groundwork has been under way for months.

"This was something that was planned long ahead," he said. "I was recruited by the foreign minister to coordinate Israel's efforts and I have never seen all parts of a very complex machinery - whether it is the Foreign Ministry, the Defence Ministry, the prime minister's office, the police or the army - work in such co-ordination, being effective in sending out the message."

In briefings in Jerusalem and London, Brussels and New York, the same core messages were repeated: that Israel had no choice but to attack in response to the barrage of Hamas rockets; that the coming attack would be on "the infrastructure of terror" in Gaza and the targets principally Hamas fighters; that civilians would die, but it was because Hamas hides its fighters and weapons factories among ordinary people.
Hand in hand went a strategy to remove the issue of occupation from discussion. Gaza was freed in 2005 when the Jewish settlers and army were pulled out, the Israelis said. It could have flourished as the basis of a Palestinian state, but its inhabitants chose conflict.

Israel portrayed Hamas as part of an axis of Islamist fundamentalist evil with Iran and Hezbollah. Its actions, the Israelis said, are nothing to do with continued occupation of the West Bank, the blockade of Gaza or the Israeli military's continued killing of large numbers of Palestinians since the pullout. "Israel is part of the free world and fights extremism and terrorism. Hamas is not," the foreign minister and Kadima party leader, Tzipi Livni, said on arriving in France as part of the diplomatic offensive last week.

Earlier in the week Livni deployed the "with us or against us" rhetoric of George W Bush's war on terror. "These are the days when every individual in the region and in the world has to choose a side. And the sides have changed. No longer is it Israel on one side and the Arab world on the other," she said. "Israel chose its side the day it was established; the Jewish people chose its side during its thousands of years of existence; and the prayer for peace is the voice sounded in the synagogues."

It was a message pumped home with receptive Arab governments, such as Egypt and Jordan, which view Hamas with hostility. "Large parts of the Muslim and Arab world realise that Hamas represents a greater danger to them even than it does to Israel. Its extremism, its fundamentalism, is a great danger to them as well," said Gillerman. "We've seen the effect of that in numerous responses, in the public statements made by [Egypt's] President Mubarak and even by [Palestinian president] Mahmoud Abbas and other Arabs. This is totally unprecedented."

Indeed, the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said his government knew exactly what was coming: "The signs that Israel was determined to strike Hamas in Gaza for the past three months were clear. They practically wrote it in the sky. Unfortunately they [Hamas] served Israel the opportunity on a golden platter."

Also crucial was what was not said. Just a few months ago Livni was talking of wiping out Hamas, but that would be unpalatable to much of the outside world as a justification for the assault. So now the talk is of pressing Gaza's government to agree to a new ceasefire. Occasionally someone has got off-message. A couple of days into the assault on Gaza, Israel's ambassador to the UN, Gabriela Shalev, said it would continue for "as long as it takes to dismantle Hamas completely". Infuriated Israeli officials in Jerusalem warned her that such statements could set back the diplomatic offensive.

In the first hours of the attack, Israel repeated the same messages to the wider world. Livni and the Labour defence minister, Ehud Barak, were widely quoted on international TV. The government's national information directorate sought to focus foreign media attention on the 8,500 rockets fired from Gaza into Israel over the past eight years and the 20 civilians they have killed, rather than the punishing blockade of Gaza and the 1,700 Palestinians killed in Israeli military attacks since Jewish settlers were pulled out of Gaza three years ago.

Lobby groups, such as the British Israel Communications and Research Centre (Bicom) in London and the Israel Project in America, were mobilised. They arranged briefings, conference calls and interviews. The Israeli military posted video footage on YouTube. Israeli diplomats in New York arranged a two-hour "citizens' press conference" on Twitter for thousands of people. At the same time, Israel in effect barred foreign journalists from witnessing the results of its strategy.

Livni has suggested that Israel's assault is good for the Palestinians by helping to free them from the grip of Hamas. "She's basically trying to convince me that they're doing this for my own good," said Diana Buttu, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation's legal counsel and negotiator with the Israelis over the 2005 pullout from Gaza. "I've had some Israeli friends reiterate the same thing: 'You should be happy that we're rooting out Hamas. They're a problem for you, too.' I don't need her to tell me what's good for me and what's bad for me, and I don't think carrying out a massacre is good for anybody."

And when the killing started, Israel claimed that the overwhelming majority of the 400-plus killed were Hamas fighters and the buildings destroyed part of the infrastructure of terror. But about a third of the dead were policemen. Although the police force in Gaza is run by Hamas, Buttu said Israel is misrepresenting it as a terrorist organisation.

"The police force is largely used for internal law and order, traffic, the drug trade. They weren't fighters. They hit them at a graduation ceremony. Israel wants to kill anyone associated with Hamas, but where does it stop? Are you a legitimate target if you work in the civil service? Are you a legitimate target if you voted for Hamas?" she said.

Similarly, while Israel accuses Hamas of risking civilian lives by hiding the infrastructure of terror in ordinary neighbourhoods, many of the Israeli missile targets are police stations and other public buildings that are unlikely to be built anywhere else.

Israel argues that Hamas abandoned the June ceasefire that Tel Aviv was prepared to continue. "Israel is the first one who wants the violence to end. We were not looking for this. There was no other option. The truce was violated by Hamas," said Livni.

However, others say that the truce was thrown into jeopardy in November when the Israeli military killed six Hamas gunmen in a raid on Gaza. The Palestinians noted that it was election day in the US, so most of the rest of the world did not notice what happened. Hamas responded by firing a wave of rockets into Israel. Six more Palestinians died in two other Israeli attacks in the following week.

"They were assaulting Gaza militarily, by sea and by air, all through the ceasefire," said Buttu. Neither did the killing of Palestinians stop. In the nearly three years since Hamas came to power, and before the latest assault on Gaza, Israel forces had killed about 1,300 people in Gaza and the West Bank. While a significant number of them were Hamas activists - and while hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by other Palestinians in fighting between Hamas and Fatah - there has been a disturbing number of civilian deaths.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights says that one in four of the victims is aged under 18. Between June 2007 and June 2008, Israeli attacks killed 68 Palestinian children and young people in Gaza. Another dozen were killed in the West Bank.

In February, an Israeli missile killed four boys, aged eight to 14, playing football in the street in Jabalia. In April, Meyasar Abu-Me'tiq and her four children, aged one to five years old, were killed when an Israeli missile hit their house as they were having breakfast. Even during the ceasefire, Israel killed 22 people in Gaza, including two children and a woman.

Perhaps crucial to the ceasefire's collapse were the differing views of what it was supposed to achieve. Israel regarded the truce as calm in return for calm. Hamas expected Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza that the latter said was a security response to the firing of Qassam rockets.

But Israel did not end the siege that was wrecking the economy and causing desperate shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Gazans concluded that the blockade was not so much about rocket attacks as punishment for voting for Hamas.

Central to the Israeli message has been that, when it pulled out its military and Jewish settlers three years ago, Gaza was offered the opportunity to prosper. "In order to create a vision of hope, we took out our forces and settlements, but instead of Gaza being the beginning of a Palestinian state, Hamas established an extreme Islamic rule," said Livni. Israeli officials argue that Hamas, and by extension the people who elected it, was more interested in hating and killing Jews than building a country.

Palestinians see it differently. Buttu says that from the day the Israelis withdrew from Gaza, they set about ensuring that it would fail economically. "When the Israelis pulled out, we expected that the Palestinians in Gaza would at least be able to lead some sort of free life. We expected that the crossing points would be open. We didn't expect that we would have to beg to allow food in," she said.

Buttu notes that even before Hamas was elected three years ago, the Israelis were already blockading Gaza. The Palestinians had to appeal to US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and James Wolfensohn, the president of the World Bank, to pressure Israel to allow even a few score of trucks into Gaza each day. Israel agreed, then reneged. "This was before Hamas won the election. The whole Israeli claim is one big myth. If there wasn't already a closure policy, why did we need Rice and Wolfensohn to try to broker an agreement?" asked Buttu.

Yossi Alpher, a former official in the Mossad intelligence service and an ex-adviser on peace negotiations to the then prime minister, Ehud Barak, said the blockade of Gaza is a failed strategy that might have strengthened Hamas. "I don't think anyone can produce clear evidence that the blockade has been counterproductive, but it certainly hasn't been productive. It's very possible it's been counterproductive. It's collective punishment, humanitarian suffering. It has not caused Palestinians in Gaza to behave the way we want them to, so why do it?" he said. "I think people really believed that, if you starved Gazans, they will get Hamas to stop the attacks. It's repeating a failed policy, mindlessly."