Israel was provoked, but as in Lebanon in 2006 it may find this war a hard one to end, or to justify.
THE scale and ferocity of the onslaught on Gaza have been shocking, and the television images of civilian suffering wrench the heart. But however deplorable, Israel’s resort to military means to silence the rockets of Hamas should have been no surprise. This war has been a long time in the making.

Since Israel evacuated its soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip three years ago, Palestinian groups in Gaza have fired thousands of rudimentary rockets and mortar bombs across the border, killing very few people but disrupting normal life in a swathe of southern Israel. They fired almost 300 between December 19th, when Hamas ignored Egypt’s entreaties and decided not to renew a six-month truce, and December 27th, when Israel started its bombing campaign.

Now cease fire

Can Israel have forgotten the lesson of Lebanon so soon? Hardly. If anything, its campaign against Hamas now is intended to compensate for its relative failure against Hizbullah then. With Iran’s nuclear threat on the horizon, and Iranian influence growing in both Lebanon and Gaza, Israel is keen to remind its enemies that the Jewish state can still fight and still win. Precisely for that reason, despite its talk of a long campaign, it may be more receptive than it is letting on to an immediate ceasefire. Its aircraft have already pummelled almost every target in Gaza. Further military gains will be harder. A truce now, if Hamas really did stop its fire, could be presented to voters as the successful rehabilitation of Israeli deterrence.

But a ceasefire needs a mediator. Mr Obama is not yet president, and George Bush has so far hung back, just as he did in 2006 while waiting for an Israeli knockout blow that did not come. This time, he and everyone else with influence should pile in at once. To bring Hamas on board, a ceasefire would need to include an end to Israel’s blockade, but that would be a good thing in itself, relieving the suffering in Gaza and removing one of the reasons Hamas gives for fighting.

After that, Mr Obama will have to gather up what is left of diplomacy in the Middle East. It is not all hopeless. Until this week, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, was talking to Israel about how to create a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. But Mr Abbas presides over the West Bank only, and little progress is possible so long as half of Palestine’s people support an organisation that can still not bring itself to renounce armed struggle or recognise Israel’s right to exist. Since Hamas is not going to disappear, some way must be found to change its mind. Bombs alone will never do that.

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Promises to Keep
Barack Obama inherits two wars, a collapsing economy, a country anxious for change—and he isn’t even president yet.

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President-elect Barack Obama looks out into the crowd after his acceptance speech at Grant Park in Chicago.
Now, he stands on the threshold of the most powerful office in the world after shattering the myth that a nation built in part on the shameful history of slavery and segregation was not ready to elect a black man as its leader. But on Election Day, Americans voted massively for change and a historic fresh start. They swept out the Republicans, who have held the White House for the past eight years, and gave the Democrats not only the presidency but also expanded majorities in Congress that will guarantee a new era of activist government. “It certainly has the feel of a watershed election,” says presidential scholar Robert Dallek. And it’s clear, Dallek adds, that “the pressure on Obama to deliver instantly is going to be enormous. People want this to be a time of unity, of coming together, and of consensus.”

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