Peace Won't Come from an Israeli F16 or Palestinian Mortar Launcher

The by now standard paradox about virtually all Israeli Defense Force operations is that legions of Israeli writers, analysts, labor and government officials ask two questions that Israeli generals never seem to ask. And that is what will a military assault ultimately cost politically and militarily and just plain from a lives lost standpoint and what will it really achieve?

Those are the questions being asked again by the legion of Israelis who plainly worry that bombing and a military incursion into Gaza will be failed, flawed, and ultimately self-defeating. It will once more prove that these attacks don't equal peace but war that leads to more war. The more war syndrome perpetuates a bloodletting cycle that leads to greater misery for Israel.

The passions, hatred, bitterness, and thirst for revenge by the Palestinians who have lost loved ones many of them innocent women, children and old people and the Israelis who have also lost loved ones many of them just as innocent is never ending. The hope as always for something that resembles a stable peace is that there are just enough sane and responsible Israelis and Palestinians who genuinely believe that peace comes from diplomacy and not out of the muzzle of a tank or the missile tube of an F16 aimed at a Gaza home or from a missile launch pad or mortars aimed at an Israeli home.