Shock-and-awe unlikely to work on Hamas, Gazans

The purpose of the “humanitarian cease-fire,” as Saturday’s lull in the fighting was euphemistically called, was to show the inhabitants of Gaza, and especially the Hamas leadership, the scope of the devastation that the Israeli army’s attacks had caused. The assumption was that if the leadership could only see for themselves what had happened in Gaza, it would soften and agree right away to the original Egyptian proposal or a more moderate version that would be drawn up during the diplomatic talks. It is hard to understand exactly what the grounds for that assumption were [...] Link