God Willing 

"God willing, we shall liberate Palestine together, inch by inch.  We started this parh and we are going to continue until we achieve what God has promised."
Khaled Mashaal Hamas

The bombing incursion by the IDF into Gaza to halt the incessant rockets launched into Israeli border towns that drew increasing rockets and increasingly sophisticated rockets, which eventually reached blindly and blandly as far as Tel Aviv and even Jerusalem, giving Israel the opportunity to test the viability of its Iron Dome protective system, did not materialize as some might have anticipated, into a ground invasion.

Israel declared itself satisfied with the airstrikes it responded with on key launching positions, Hamas infrastructure, and weapons depots, matching strike-for-strike with the numbers of rockets sent over into Israel, as it agreed to the terms set by Egypt mediating a truce between its partner-for-peace Israel, and its Islamist Muslim Brotherhood offshoot Hamas.

Israel, mindful of the caution expected of it from the watchful and censorious eyes of its European detractors, and of its own human-rights internal demands, took care not to exact too-onerous and unacceptable a toll on the civilian population of Gaza, even as Hamas used the population as cover for their activities, launching rockets from within well-populated areas in the certain knowledge that those areas would be targeted to destroy the launch sites.

Even though the difference in attitudes and human values is so stark and so evident, Israel gets no free passes when, as is unavoidable in war, civilian lives are lost.  That they are lost as a direct result of Hamas manipulating those situations to guarantee civilian victims is not without its benefits to Hamas, knowing full well that the deaths of Palestinian civilians in war strikes will redound critically against Israel.

Hamas is never held to account for its deliberate sheltering behind civilian enclaves, drawing return fire from Israel to destroy the launch sites that potentially imperil Israeli citizens.  The terror aspect of Hamas's intentionally seeking to destroy Israeli civilian life is taken as granted, with no international opprobrium colouring the support of the international community that declares Israel's response to Hamas provocations (as in declarations and acts of war) unnecessary and disproportionate.

That Israel acceded to the expectations of its critics, and whom it desperately needs to support its existence against the viral slander and vicious attacks launched within the United Nations by the Fatah faction of the Palestinian Authority, an illegal entity in fact, when a democratic vote brought the majority consensus in favour of Hamas, speaks volumes of international support unfailingly thrown toward Arab rights, disfavouring Jewish rights.

Despite the heavy damage inflicted within Gaza by the Israeli air strikes, rocket fire from Gaza never ceased, although it can be assumed safely enough that the Hamas stockpile of such weapons was hugely diminished, both through use and interception, and through being destroyed in their caches.  Hamas, despite its losses, both of military commanders and foot militia, along with headquarter infrastructure and munitions, proclaims itself blessed with victory over its enemy.

Its victory, in fact, lay in the fact that it has not been outright denounced by the international community.  Its victory resides in the fact that Egypt is now ruled by an Islamist government, by the very Muslim Brotherhood that breathed life into Hamas, as a junior tentacle of the larger enterprise.  Its victory appears as a result of its vindication seen as the emir of Qatar visited and offered largesse.  Victory resulted in the applause and adulation offered Hamas by Palestinians.

And Israel, suffering through twenty-five years of deadly assaults by death-loving, death-delivering, death-defying, martyrdom-obsessed Islamist Hamas can most surely anticipate years to come of more of the same enhanced by more advanced weaponry.  While Fatah professes to be at one with its brothers, brothers among whom no love is lost for Fatah. 

Fatah, which presents itself at the United Nations as a willing partner for Peace with Israel despite what it describes as a foe willing genocide upon Palestinians, announces itself devoted to peaceful means of 'resistance' against its oppressors, the 'occupiers' of Palestinian land.  Fatah, despite that, is incapable of denouncing the state to which Hamas has committed violence against the possibility of peace, for it too has done likewise, under subterfuge.

On the surface, Israel has a peace partner in Fatah.  Engaged in its own battle for survival against the greater success of its counterpart pledged to violence and destruction of the Jews and their Jewish state whom they consider by its presence having violated the sanctity of Islamic-purified land.

All those with brilliant recommendations through which this intractable stale-mate can be moved forward to a successful conclusion that would honour the presence of a Jewish state within a geographic enclave of Islamist-motivated, anti-Semitic obsessed Arab and Muslim states and jihadist state proxies, kindly send them post-haste to the principals, the United Nations and blind-copy Mecca.