Okay, this should surprise no one, but The Independent's Robert Fisk points out the obvious consequences of Israel blocking Western reporters from entering Gaza (for the moment -- over the last months it was threats from gangsters which made Gaza an undesired site):

...the Israeli army is trying the same doomed tactic again. Ban the press. Keep the cameras out. By yesterday morning, only hours after the Israeli army went clanking into Gaza to kill more Hamas members – and, of course, more civilians – Hamas was reporting the capture of two Israeli soldiers. Reporters on the ground could have sorted out the truth or the lie about that. But without a single Western journalist in Gaza, the Israelis were left to tell the world that they didn't know if the story was true...

That the Israelis should use an old Soviet tactic to blind the world's vision of war may not be surprising. But the result is that Palestinian voices – as opposed to those of Western reporters – are now dominating the airwaves. The men and women who are under air and artillery attack by the Israelis are now telling their own story on television and radio and in the papers as they have never been able to tell it before, without the artificial "balance", which so much television journalism imposes on live reporting. Perhaps this will become a new form of coverage – letting the participants tell their own story. The flip side, of course, is that there is no Westerner in Gaza to cross-question Hamas's devious account of events: another victory for the Palestinian militia, handed to them on a plate by the Israelis.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-keeping-out-the-cameras-and-reporters-simply-doesnt-work-1225800.html

The militarists on each side are the other side's militarists' best friends. Even when they're at war.

To be honest, though I've heard a range of analyses, I can't yet feel like I've settled on what the goal of this 6-month planned assault on Gaza is.

You're right in that no one should take seriously the argument of each and every year that the latest representatives of Palestine are terrorist and unacceptable to the Israelis, as that has been the excuse every day and every year for generations now.

For its own sake, Hamas appears to be thinking this will somehow be useful for it, though I doubt it will be as clear a victory as the Israeli attack in Lebanon of 2006 proved to be for Hizbullah.

But it wasn't a good idea at the time.

(Forget for a second the need to clarify the more indirect chain of how the US' recruitment of an army of Islamic fundamentalist drug dealing warlords in Afghanistan spawned Al Qa'ida.)

That's the point.

The idiot militarists who assure you each and every time that only "they" can keep you / us / Israel safe are wrong. They're not only wrong, their goals are different.

The Israeli militarists weren't helping found Hamas because they wanted to make Israelis or Palestinians "safe". They were doing it because it was part of their militarist game, to "undermine" the Enemy, to make sure there was no outbreak of peace to ruin the long-term game they knew they were right about.

They weren't right. It was a terrible idea. It was another way of avoiding any sane settlement and it was backed by the same bullsh*t militarist ideology that justifies any militarist policy.

And really, does it sound like a good idea, "at the time"? Really? No. It doesn't. It didn't sound like a "good idea" at the time, and any jackass that thought it did was an idiot and suffered from the same blinkered judgment that lots of self-confident, boasting fools throughout history have exhibited.

A bunch of morons and jackasses who thought that what Israel needed was for the Palestinian community to be wrought with splits over religious fundamentalism in order to break up the power of secular organizations.

Yeah. That's real "pro-Israel". That's really boldly in favor of "Israeli security."

If the Israeli militarists are truly opposed to radical Islamic terrorists, why would they undermine existing secular Palestinian organizations in order to help create the fundamentalist Hamas?