The path of Middle East history is littered with the peace accords and agreements brokered by third parties, agreed to by Israel and broken by the Palestinians.

Arafat, the Palestinian leader, popularly known as

“the man who never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity “

was a malignant force of evil from the beginning.

All through his terror campaigns, jet plane hijackings, murders and Olympic atrocities as well as the events which lead the Jordanians to expel him and his followers from Jordan and the Egyptians to maintain a strict border between them and Gaza the Israelis negotiated.

It is only the internal political weaknesses of Lebanon which allows the Palestinian scum in the refugee camps to continue to fire rockets on Israel.

Now I see little from the pro-Palestinian whining left about Hamas rockets which landed on a school in Israel today.

“If the Israeli government really cared about its citizens and the country's long term ability to sustain itself in the Middle East, it would abandon the use of violence and talk with its enemies.”

Israel has consistently been willing to engage in a dialogue toward peace.

The Palestinians have been prepared to talk-the-talk but have never, ever attempted to walk-the-walk, quite the opposite,

It takes both of the opposing sides to agree to a peace.

Palestine has the death of its own people as well as Jews on its hands.

Those Palestinians who saw the light of reason left to settle elsewhere in the world years ago.

What is left of the Palestinians is the hard-core hopeless, one murderous faction versus another murderous faction killing each other to control the distribution of external aid..

I am at the point where I do believe the only solution will be found in the extinguishment of the Palestinians as an identifiable social/political entity.

The lives of 400,000 Israelis are threatened on a daily basis that are in the proximate range of Quassam rockets; the FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT, a cardinal principle of human rights, of the same number of Israelis is abrogated by their enforcement to live in and out of shelters on a daily basis. And yet Neve Gordon imaginatively argues and has the audacity to claim that Israel has solely launched this attack for the purpose of “electoral politics and restoring its military reputation.” This is monumental stupidity on his part.

http://www.xanga.com/kotzabasis

GO Israel!

Interesting, the lumping together of Haaretz and the Green Left Weekly.

I would put Haaretz (a bit like that arguably leftwing liberal rag, the Washington Post?) together with the defunct and indisputably leftwing Israeli paper, Al HaMishmar, were they fundamentally similar. Substitution of Al Hashimar for GLW seems reasonable to me. Neither are current Israeli publications.

Those who appeal to history in their appreciation of Israel's existence as a nation may be interested in demographic history - eg:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel

"Israeli demographic policy
“As Israel's continued existence as a "Jewish State" relies upon maintenance of a Jewish demographic majority, Israeli demographers, politicians and bureaucrats have treated Jewish population growth promotion as a central question in their research and policymaking. Non-Jewish population growth and immigration is regarded as a threat to the Jewish demographic majority and to Israel's security, as detailed in the Koenig Memorandum."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koenig_Memorandum

(snip)

"During the 1970s about 163,000 people immigrated to Israel from the USSR. Later Ariel Sharon, in his capacity as Minister of Housing & Construction and member of the Ministerial Committee for Immigration & Absorption, launched an unprecedented large-scale construction effort to accommodate the new Russian population in Israel so as to facilitate their smooth integration and encourage further Jewish immigration as an ongoing means of increasing the Jewish population of Israel.[21]"

&c

Between 1990 & 2000, about 816,000 migrants arrived from former USSR states. That's about 12% of the current Israeli population of 7.1 million.
(http://www.cbs.gov.il/shnaton53/shnatone53.htm)

The CIA Factbook describes the land area of Israel as "about the size of New Jersey". About 15% of the land is arable.

I don’t doubt Israel's right to exist, but their present trends and current relations with Hamas cause me to doubt their sustainability. With alarming systemic flaws in their policies, and a zoofull of messianic nutcakes cheering on the sidelines, I am not optimistic.

Meanwhile, Israel's pollies focus myopically on their upcoming election, and begin to look more and more to me like dentists doing extractions with chainsaws.

Aren't many of you missing the point?
The article isn't about who is right or who is wrong and who the villains are. That is obvious!...it takes TWO to conduct a war.
The question is as posed "what is Israel’s Agenda"
The right and wrongs of this conflict are hardly neither new nor unique.
I seem to remember a number of 1&4 hundred year wars in and around Europe in history.
As one insightful poster noted this ‘conflict' was propagated by outside forces.( UK, USA, France, the Arab league and other assorted self interested bodies.) True there was no "nation" of Palestinians...but then again neither did the surrounding "nations" as such. Nationalism as we understand it is a relatively new concept barely 200+ years old e.g. Germany. The only commonalities are the forces that control them. "Countries" have always existed with multiple cultures religions and languages under a superimposed national identity(History has shown this is an uncomfortable and temporary situation at best.)
What is conveniently missed by power sources with these superficial aggregations it the individuals.
The bald facts are the Domicile Arabs many with legitimate British, French titles were dispossessed by an act of self interested/serving "nations". Meanwhile the peasant whose only interest is to survive and raise their families is forced into a war for others in the mistaken belief tomorrow will be a better day for a 'normal' life.
In this perspective all the to-ing and fro-ing by religious, political individuals proffering political ideologies only serve to obfuscate, add angst and internecine Machiavellian intrigue to the already volatile topic while the individual (much like you and I) suffers as pawns in someone else’s power game.
The question is what are the plitical goals of the indivduals involved? To me if mass ordinary people are suffering it is wrong! Who cares who or why it started it's about the suffereing (on both sides)that keeps it going, stupid.

Dear Ivor

I appreciated that last post.. particularly the last couple of humorous paragraphs :)

Glad you accept Israels right to exist. Of course.. in any group of humanity, they also share the best and the worst characteristics and behavior. Just because they are 'Israelis' does not immunize their soldiers from atrocity in moments of heat.

My real solution of course is for ALL of them.. Arab and Jew/Israeli to embrace Christ as Messiah. But this is not something I can orchestrate, so I woffle on about how humans normally approach such conflicts and refer also to appropriate historical and theological angles.

Having an acheivable goal for Gaza is a big challenge for sure.

1/ Wipe out Hamas...... very difficult, house to house... many losses and at the end.. all you get is an emerging 'Mini-me' Hamas generation growing up and being fed by all the propoganda of the last Israeli attack.

2/ Stop the Rockets. Refer to '1' above.. as long as their are Palestinians in Gaza... and Islam is their religion.. rockets will be launched.

3/ Ethnically cleanse Gaza. Probably the most unpalatable but also most workable solution to the rocket problem.

Ancient Israel had ongoing problems/conflict with the proto-palestinians.. the Phillistines. Nothing new there.