Where does it end?

Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 21 January 2008

".....Terms like "measures" and "persuasion" sound so gentle. But they cover up a brutal reality that Israeli leaders are keen to boast about: they are acting with premeditation to inflict suffering on the Palestinian civilian population, and they display an extraordinary degree of callousness for their victims.

Israel must instruct its army to "eliminate the rocket fire from Gaza" completely, "irrespective of the cost to the Palestinians," Israeli Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter told the cabinet on Sunday. ("Dichter: We must stop attacks from Gaza at all cost," Ynet, 20 January 2008.).....

Israeli leaders are usually careful to lace their statements with pro forma denials that they are deliberately trying to create a "humanitarian" crisis -- though they never define what level of deliberately inflicted suffering might cross that threshold. Gaza's residents "are hostages of a deranged regime, but there is no real humanitarian crisis there," said housing minister Zeev Boim, apparently referring to Hamas, not his own government.

The logic seems to be that Israel can do whatever it wants, as long as officials use euphemisms to describe it. As Dov Weissglas, Olmert's advisor, so notoriously put it when Israel began its strangulation of Gaza in early 2006, "It's like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won't die." But they do die, in large numbers......

Almost ignored are the comments of John Dugard, UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, who countered that the "killing of some 40 Palestinians in Gaza in the past week, the targeting of a government office near a wedding party venue with what must have been foreseen loss of life and injury to many civilians, and the closure of all crossings into Gaza raise very serious questions about Israel's respect for international law." He condemned Israel for violating "the strict prohibition on collective punishment contained in the Fourth Geneva Convention."......"