Israel, supported energetically by Washington (and using US-supplied aircraft, bombs and rockets), has caused "incidental loss of life" and general civilian casualties on an enormous scale. The Israeli military and the Israeli people knew full well that their genocidal attack on Gaza would kill civilians. The use of white phosphorous in built-up areas is worthy of the Nazis at their most brutal. Stalin and Mao would nod approvingly. It wasn't considered important that there would be countless civilian deaths. Nobody cares, and least of all American politicians. The next secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, refuses to comment on the atrocities. The incoming vice-president has been silent. President-elect Obama? As Reuters reported : "Obama . . . has not commented on the Middle East crisis since Israel launched attacks on Gaza nine days ago. His advisers insist that only President George W Bush can speak for America until then." But it was noted that "The president-elect has commented on the global economic crisis and his plans to try to pull the US economy out of recession."

The blockade on land, on sea and in the air against a million and a half human beings is an act of war, as much as any dropping of bombs or launching of rockets. It paralyzes life in the Gaza Strip: eliminating most sources of employment, pushing hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation, stopping most hospitals from functioning, disrupting the supply of electricity and water.

Those who decided to close the crossings – under whatever pretext – knew that there is no real cease-fire under these conditions.

That is the main thing. Then there came the small provocations which were designed to get Hamas to react. After several months, in which hardly any Qassam rockets were launched, an army unit was sent into the Strip “in order to destroy a tunnel that came close to the border fence”. From a purely military point of view, it would have made more sense to lay an ambush on the Israeli side of the fence. But the aim was to find a pretext for the termination of the cease-fire, in a way that made it plausible to put the blame on the Palestinians. And indeed, after several such small actions, in which Hamas fighters were killed, Hamas retaliated with a massive launch of rockets, and – lo and behold – the cease-fire was at an end. Everybody blamed Hamas.

for littering this blog with his racist Nazi-like rubbish must be seven israeli virgin female soldiers just out of boot-camp, sponsored by AIPAC.

Just one example: Israeli public schools are segregated, rarely will an Arab student be allowed to attend a public Jewish high-school. A gifted Arab boy, after an exhaustive struggle, managed to gain entrance to an excellent high school in the Haifa area because his father had actually served in the IDF. No Jewish student would sit next to him. During recess, no one would talk to him. He was routinly bullied at the schoolyard, he would frequently get beaten up because he was "looking at Jewish girls". Unlike the Arabs in the occupied territories, he was an Israeli citizen. Israeli propaganda and the idiotic and subservient US MSM depict Israel as a democratic bastion and a victim of terrorism. In reality, Israel is an apartheid state that has treated it's Arab minority like the S. African apartheid regime treated it's black majority. The Palestinians in the occupied territories are treated much worse, and the word genocide isn't a hyperbole.

Israel removed its military from Gaza because keeping it there was too dangerous and too expensive. Israel never ended the occupation of Gaza. The bogus "withdrawal was also meant to make it easier for Israel to focus on the much coveted West Bank, where Israel hasn't stopped stealing Arab land and expanding settlement. Israel decides who can leave or enter Gaza, Israel controls the Gaza air-space, controls access to the Gaza port and has implemented a suffocating and devastating blockade (in itself an act of war under international law) on Gaza. This is an occupation no matter how one looks at it. The notion that one nation can occupy another but the occupied should be prohibited from resisting is particularly hypocritical and offensive.

has no intention of allowing a viable, sovereign Palestinian state on its borders. It had no intention of allowing it in 1948 when it grabbed 24 per cent more land than what it was allotted legally, if unfairly, by UN Resolution 181. It had no intention of allowing it throughout the massacres and ploys of the 1950s. It had no intention of allowing two states when it conquered the remaining 22 per cent of historic Palestine in 1967 and reinterpreted UN Security Council Resolution 242 to its own liking despite the overwhelming international consensus stating that Israel would receive full international recognition within secure and recognized borders if it withdrew from the lands it had only recently occupied.

It had no intention of acknowledging Palestinian national rights at the United Nations in 1974, when –alone with the United States—it voted against a two-state solution. It had no intention of allowing a comprehensive peace settlement when Egypt stood ready to deliver but received, and obediently accepted, a separate peace exclusive of the rights of Palestinians and the remaining peoples of the region. It had no intention of working toward a just two-state solution in 1978 or 1982 when it invaded, fire-bombed, blasted and bulldozed Beirut so that it might annex the West Bank without hassle. It had no intention of granting a Palestinian state in 1987 when the first Intifada spread across occupied Palestine, into the Diaspora and the into the spirits of the global dispossessed, or when Israel deliberately aided the newly formed Hamas movement so that it might undermine the strength of the more secular-nationalist factions.