Herod Archelaus

I find it interesting that during the brokered cease-fire, Palestinians stopped launching rockets but Israel didn't stop the expansion of its settlements. I'm not implying a causal relationship--West-Bank settlements certainly weren't the proximate cause of the breakdown in Gaza. It says something about good faith, though, no? Anyway, one does wonder what Israel's endgame is in all of this. I mean, short of eradicating the Palestinian people, an option they don't have the stomach for (yet), what benefit do they hope to gain? Neither air power nor ground assaults, up to and including physical occupation, stop bombings and rocket launches. Cf. Iraq, Afghanistan. And if the plan is to topple the Hamas pseudogovernment in the Gaza Strip, who is to replace them? Clearly Fatah is in no position to step in.

A guy like Gerson is actually right to note that proportionality in warfare is an odd concept and that the mere taking of life for life is just revenge. The fact he conveniently elides, however, is that none of the goals in his fantasia are achievable through war. Israel is just engaging in some good, old-fashioned collective punishment. You don't even have to compare them to the you-know-whos. In that part of the world, there's plenty of older precedent. Everyone's a damn Roman these days.