Conflict Interregnum

"Israel will honour the ceasefire and will be watching to see if Hamas does, too."
"We will be putting first on our agenda preventing Hamas from rearming. Ultimately the Palestinians have a written commitment that Gaza should be demilitarized and it's time the international community held them to that commitment."
Mark Regev, Israeli government spokesman

"It's clear now that the interest of all parties is to have a ceasefire."
"It's going to be tough negotiations because Israel has demands, too. We don't have any guarantees the siege will be removed."
Fawzi Barhoum, Hamas spokesman

"We destroyed all the tunnels we knew of. All the tunnels we discovered in the course of the operation, we destroyed. In the next few hours, we'll complete the tunnel operation."
Major-Gen.Sami Turgeman, head, Israel southern command

"We estimate that between 700 and 900 terrorists were killed in direct contact with Israeli soldiers."
"That's a number that could rise because there were many terrorists inside the tunnels that we probably killed when the tunnels were blown up."
Brig.-Gen. Moti Almoz, disputing claims of Palestinian dead mostly civilians

Israeli tanks withdrawing from the Gaza Strip. 'Hamas still rules Gaza,' admitted one soldier. 'Damaged and weakened but still there.' Photo: Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty

Finally, the antagonists have agreed to an Egyptian-sponsored ceasefire proposal to bring the dreadful month-long conflict to an end, however temporarily. Until Hamas has devised new methods for covertly assembling another deadly arsenal of weapons, giving it the confidence once again to goad Israel into responding to the terrorist group's end-goal of destroying the Jewish state's presence in the Middle East.

Both announced their acceptance of the proposal for a preliminary 72-hour truce. Egypt is prepared to continue its intermediary work with indirect talks enabling a long-term truce. Israel feels confident it has destroyed the threatening tunnel network used to stage attacks by Hamas terrorists within Israel. The oft-repeated statement that "mostly civilians" have lost their lives in the Israeli strikes responding to Hamas missiles never is accompanied by that popular word "alleged".

Whereas the skeptics who love to doubt Israel and cling to the veracity of Hamas public relation statements, including those too outrageously absurd for a normal mind to contemplate, report on the tunnels "allegedly" built by militants for the purpose of staging attacks across the border. Hamas sought a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza; readily enough accomplished at any time were they to forswear their agenda of violence against Israel.

Hamas also insisted on an end to the Israeli and Egyptian blockade of Gaza, along with the release of Hamas prisoners being held by Israel. And oh, yes of course, international assistance in the reconstruction of Gaza. This is called chutzpa; for a terrorist group to embark on a mission geared to destroy the civilian enclave of which they are the sole administrators, living off international donations to keep their situation viable, while skimming off the majority of it for weapons and tunnels, then calling on the international community to rebuild what their violence has destroyed.

Israel would be deliberately courting its own destruction if it acceded to the final two demands; loosing former murderers and terrorists from prison to enable them to return to their former activities which brought them a prison sentence to begin with, and opening the corridors of weapons-transfer to ease the accumulation of arms and munitions rather than through tunnel-stealth conveyance. Egypt, in full cognizance of Hamas' Muslim Brotherhood credentials is aware it has been causing no end of problems in the Sinai peninsula.

For the time being, then, a halt in the conflict, enabling the battered Palestinians to find some solace, gather together their living resources and mourn their dead. While Hamas's great governing minds work overtime to try to figure out how they can possibly convince Gazans that another great triumph has been theirs, in victory over the Zionist occupiers.