This aerial and ground campaign by Israel has now laster for 18 days, during which Israel seems to have learned from its previous such conflicts. It has withstood pressure from all around to stop this campaign (and taken heart from the Bush administration’s unwillingness to criticize Israel for these actions), taking the campaign deep inside Gaza. There have been a huge number of civilian casualties in this campaign, but Israel is stone-walling all such pressures. Inside Israel, the realization that Hamas controls a territory from where it can keep on attacking Israel through rockets that are steadily increasing in range (and from where it can soon reach crucial parts of Israel) would be part of the calculations to try and stop Hamas. This is a risky effort, and will not win Israel too many friends (although if the campaign succeeds and Hamas is weakened, there will be a weakening of the push by Iran and Syria to take leadership of the anti-Israeli campaign; something that will make many of the Governments of many of the Islamic countries of the region happy).

Israel says it attacked more than 60 targets overnight in Gaza as its offensive against Hamas entered its 18th day. The air assault came as Israeli troops advanced in the southern and eastern suburbs of Gaza City. The Israeli military also announced another three-hour ceasefire, starting at 0900 local time (0700 GMT), to allow aid lorries into Gaza.
Meanwhile, reports suggest diplomatic efforts between Egypt and Hamas in Cairo are progressing. After meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Middle East Quartet envoy Tony Blair said the elements were in place for a ceasefire agreement. “I am hopeful we can put an agreement together but it’s going to have to be worked on very hard and it’s got to be credible,” he told journalists. Israel hopes the scale of its operation will greatly reduce the number of missiles fired from Gaza into southern Israel, while eroding support for Hamas.

There are no easy solutions to the problem. The people of Gaza voted Hamas into a leading position, and pretty soon Hamas had evicted Fatah militarily from the strip of land, and taken command of the small strip of land abandoned by Israel in 2005. Hamas sees a long term aim as the eviction of Israel from the region, and does not recognize its right to exist. Israel is hoping that it will be able to destroy the top leadership of Hamas and scare it enough that Hamas will stop firing rockets into Israel, and one does not know whether that can ever be achieved.

WASHINGTON, April 22 (UPI) — U.S. State Department officials disputed comments made by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter about Hamas’ views about Israel and peace. Hamas leaders, meanwhile, said they could accept a Palestinian state, but contradicted Carter’s statements about accepting Israel’s right to exist if approved by the Palestinian people, The Washington Times reported Tuesday.

“We accept a state on the (1967) line with Jerusalem as capital, real sovereignty and full right of return for refugees but without recognizing Israel,” al-Jazeera quoted Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal, who met with Carter, as saying.

And of course, no party in Israel will ever accept any of these terms. Israel has always disputed that Jerusalem will be the basis of a Palestinian state (a part maybe, but will never give up Jerusalem), Israel will never accept the full right of the refugees to return (that would be a demographic disaster that Israel would consider as a threat to its concept of majority Jewish rule; and Israel will never accept a negotiating partner who does not accept the right of Israel to exist.
The first 2 points can have multiple view points, but no person should accept a terrorist organization that has committed all sorts of atrocities, that teaches children how to hold weapons, and that refuses to accept the right of Israel to exist.

Palestinian militants in Gaza fire rockets daily at towns in southern Israel. The crude rockets wreak panic but rarely cause serious casualties. Gaza’s Hamas rulers have not been actively involved, but have done nothing to halt the rocket fire. Tuesday’s attack was the largest number of injuries sustained in a single such attack against Israel.

Attacks last week on Sderot, including one near a crowded day care center, led parents to pull their children out of school and brought demands for retaliation. Israel’s Security Cabinet last week rejected calls for a large-scale Gaza invasion but threatened to cut water, electricity and fuel supplies to Gaza. Tuesday’s attack was sure to bring calls for a strong Israeli reaction. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has repeatedly said Israel would show no restraint in its efforts to stem the attacks from Gaza.

This is a ticklish situation for the Prime Minister. Now his army has been attacked, and yet he cannot prevent these rockets from getting fired on a regular basis. Cutting off food and other such supplies to Gaza carries its own political cost, and not very low either. On other hand, with the previous botched war against Hezbollah, the Prime Minister is under pressure to show his strong side. But attacking Gaza is not going to be a solution, after all, the Israelis themselves had left Gaza despite severe internal pressures; and any such attack will be sure to bring about a major conflict between Israel and Hamas, and there will be casualties, something that Ehud Olmert would really want to avoid. Tough choices, and no easy solution.

For the first time in its history, the Palestinian Authority has published a policy platform that doesn’t include “armed resistance” to Israel as a core principle. A new government program presented by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and prime minister Salaam Fayyad has drawn praise from peaceniks on both sides, and fresh scorn from Hamas, after the Arabic word muqawama was left out of the document for the first time since the PA was established in 1993. The program was presented to the Palestinian cabinet on Thursday, but details of it began to emerge only Friday.
An aide to Mr. Fayyad said Friday that the deletion didn’t mean Palestinians are any more accepting of the 40-year-old Israeli occupation of their lands. Instead, the new government will embrace what Mr. Abbas has called “popular struggle” while rejecting armed attacks on Israeli targets. “We have the right to refuse and resist the occupation, but our experience shows that peaceful, active resistance — like in the first intifada, which was absolutely non-violent — could be more effective,” said Jamal Zakut, a close confidante of Mr. Fayyad’s.

This is something that Israel will welcome. No matter what the current state of progress between the Palestinians and Israel, there is a large section of people in Israel who would like nothing better than to have a time of peace, and not be worried about terrorism and suicide bombings. Currently they have that due to the wall in the West Bank, but a long term peace is something that will enable the country to develop and grow economically much more.
Of course, any solution or a peace initiative still does not reconcile the changed status of the Gaza Strip where the Hamas rulers refuse to acknowledge any peace initiatives by the Fatah movement and will certainly find it hard to accept any accord that leaves portions of the West Bank, Gaza or Jerusalem with the Israelis, and Israel will not accept any agreement that removes control of Jerusalem from it.