From Informed Comment:

Aljazeera English reports on the school bombing: warning, graphic.



For footage of an earlier, gruesome attack that killed a whole family, including children, watch this if you have the stomach for it:



If it is a heck of a note to be ten years old and dead, it isn't that much fun to be alive, either, under near-famine conditions. Thirteen thousand Gazans have fled their homes but have no where to go, since they are blockaded in Gaza, as though they were not human beings but rather roaches in a jar. Ofira Koopmans and Saud Abu Ramadan of Deutsche Press Agentur report,

' Residents of Gaza City, who have been without electricity for days, say they have only small amounts of drinking water. With even candles now a scarce commodity, Gaza City residents sit in the dark - many of them in winter coats as they keep windows open to avoid glass shards flying inside their homes from a possible nearby blast. . with the large influx of casualties - unprecedented in at least five decades of the conflict - . . . hospitals are in urgent need of blood units, anaesthetics, strong painkillers, tetanus vaccines and even body bags and sheets, according to the Red Cross. Only two bakeries remain open in Gaza City, with queues stretching all the way down the street. After venturing outdoors and waiting in line for hours on end, each customer can get one plastic bag with 50 small pita breads. Prices have nearly doubled since the offensive began. Large parts of the strip also have no tap water, as power blackout mean pumps are not working.'

Nancy Kanwisher of MIT can count and therefore so does her article. She demonstrates that after the Israel-Hamas truce was concluded in mid-June, 2008, for four months there were virtually no rockets fired at Israel. The rockets began again after two Israeli attacks that killed several Palestinians. Kaminer analyzes periods of mutual violence and relative calm in the past few years and finds that in 80% of the cases, it is Israel that has re-initiated the violence. Her well-grounded analysis demonstrates the falsehood of the allegations that it is impossible to deal with Hamas or that it has always been Hamas that has started the fighting.

Kaminer's findings make perfect sense if it is remembered that Israel is by far the stronger party and dominates the scene.

Avi Shlaim of Oxford University gives an overview of the Gaza struggle. He explains that he believes the big mistake was for Israel to occupy the Palestinian territories in 1967 and to colonize them.
Highlights:

' Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence. . .'

' Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era . . . In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. . .'

' To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace . . .'

'Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs . . . '