Reason Cannot Prevail

"The United Nations representative in Jerusalem, Special Co-ordinator for the Middle East Robert Serry, has received assurances that all parties have agreed to an unconditional humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza."
"During this time the forces on the ground will remain in place. We urge all parties to act with restraint until this humanitarian cease-fire begins, and to fully abide by their commitments during the ceasefire."
"This ceasefire is critical to giving innocent civilians a much-needed reprieve from violence. During this period, civilians in Gaza will receive urgently needed humanitarian relief, and the opportunity to carry out vital functions, including burying the dead, taking care of the injured, and restocking food supplies. Overdue repairs on essential water and energy infrastructure could also continue during this period."
Joint statement: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry

"We have neutralized dozens of terror tunnels and we are committed to complete this mission, with or without a cease-fire."
"Therefore, I will not agree to any offer that does not allow the military to complete this important mission for the security of the people of Israel."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

 

Israeli Defense Minister, Moshe Ya'alon, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, attend the cabinet meeting at the defense ministry in Tel Aviv, Israel, Thursday, July 31, 2014. (AP Photo/Dan Balilty, pool)

Israel is committed, as any other nation would logically be, to defending itself and protecting its population from attacks mounted continually across its border from Gaza, by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the governing terrorist group Hamas. That Hamas is a terrorist group is indisputable; it was created for the very distinct purpose of destroying the State of Israel and restoring, it insists, the land to the people of Palestine. The original people of Palestine now sit on the land Hamas covets.

Israel began its latest defensive operation against Hamas rockets and incursions into Israel with the intention of destroying as much of the ten thousand estimated rockets that Hamas has stored in caches for the time it deemed adequate to once again attack the Jewish state. During the process hoping that opportunities would present to decommission the leaders of Hamas, but that's a fond hope since the leaders have accustomed their supporters to view martyrdom as their dearest wish, while they plan themselves to evade that honoured state.

It seems obvious that at that point Israel had no real idea how pervasive was the maze of tunnels that Hamas and Islamic Jihad had laboriously built under the land upon which Gaza sits, some of which were designed to lead out to Egypt and some into Israel. That game-changer required a ground invasion along with the aerial bombardment and marine artillery attacks on identified assault sites and weapons caches. Having demolished 32 tunnels, the IDF is searching out the remainder.

One of which, just minutes into the much-fanfared 72-hour ceasefire, led to Hamas terrorists entering a tunnel the IDF was in the process of destroying, to kill five Israeli soldiers and abduct another. So much for Hamas's dedication to easing the plight of the long-suffering Palestinian Gazans long used as human shields but never quite resigned to their fate when confronted with the deaths of children at the brutal hands of their Jewish oppressors.

The 72-hour humanitarian truce in Gaza was broken after less than three hours on Friday /AFP

 And now a different statement emanates from the White House: "If they are serious about trying to resolve this situation, that soldier needs to be unconditionally released as soon as possible.

"It's going to be very hard to put a cease-fire back together again if Israelis and the international community can't feel confident that Hamas can follow through on a cease-fire commitment.

"Innocent civilians caught in the crossfire have to weigh on our conscience, and we have to do more." U.S. President Barack Obama

Egypt will attempt again, there is little doubt, to redouble its futile efforts to draw up a mutually agreeable cease-fire arrangement but it is futile because the only issue that Hamas will agree to is Israel committing itself to oblivion through agreeing to open the blockade, for Hamas will never withdraw from its own commitment to destroy Israel. Mr. Kerry committed a monumental error in judgement when he snubbed the PA and Egypt and conferred with Turkey and Qatar.

Turkey and Qatar represent Hamas' now-rare cheering section in its assaults on Israel, spurring it on to ever greater action, and providing it with the funding to enable it to do just that. This is Byzantine Middle East at its very most sinister. There is no place for Western sensibilities of justice and reason in this admixture of ancient animosities of deep brutishness.

And Israel is not emanoured with the international community's view of it as a sacrificial lamb.