Opinion: Israel should avoid a premature ceasefire

Nobody likes war. Actually, that's not true. Many people love war, and they especially love watching it from the safety of their glass houses. It allows them to hop onto their soapboxes and express sympathy for the romantic underdogs while wagging manicured fingers at Goliath. Except, of course, if those underdogs are black; for some reason, when hundreds of thousands of Africans are being slaughtered, the self-righteous, with the odd exception, are nowhere to be found or heard from. Don't worry all ye who suffer in Darfur, I'm sure your cause will become trendy soon enough. But I digress.

I am unsure, and frankly not sufficiently informed, to know whether invading Gaza was the right thing for Israel to do in the first place. Yes, Hamas provoked it by launching missiles at Israel after a flimsy ceasefire had expired, but perhaps there were other options available to the Jewish State that would have been less devastating on a humanitarian level to both sides, particularly the Palestinians. But they're in there, and as an aside, while Israel has taken its share of criticism over this mess, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that in and of itself, is there a country on this planet that would have reacted differently? Many nations that have offered token condemnation of Israel have themselves set precedents of reacting far more viciously to conflicts thousands of kilometers from their own borders; France and England spring to mind. But again, I digress.

So whether or not it was the right thing to do, they are in there, and it would be foolish to leave now for the sake of another flimsy ceasefire. Let's face it; as much as the international community hums and haws about this latest round of Jew vs. Arab, it is in pretty well the entire world's best interest, particularly for Israel and the Palestinians, that Hamas be annihilated. Though they won't admit it publicly, don't for a second think that many heads of state are not happy that Israel is taking on the task. So if Israel's goal here is to get rid of Hamas, and if it is not then this whole exercise is indeed pointless, they should get the job done and be done with it.

I understand that there is a humanitarian toll being paid for these Machiavellian measures, but what is the alternative? To withdraw, enjoy another short spurt of quiet, and then go through the whole thing all over again? Over time, this has proven and will continue to prove much more devastating. And on the subject of that humanitarian toll, while I am not, like too many of Israel's supporters, naive enough to be offended by criticism of Israel's responsibility for this crisis, and in fact I sympathize a great deal with the ordinary Palestinians that are caught in the crossfire, I still believe that in the long run, staying in Gaza until the job is done is the best thing for both sides. Furthermore, even these criticisms are drenched in hypocrisy. For instance, many are all too eager to cry foul over the limited amount of aid that Israel is allowing into Gaza. Fair enough, but in the interest of maintaining a semblance of objectivity, shouldn't these critiques also raise questions about why Egypt, the supposed ally of the Palestinian people, hasn't allowed a morsel of aid into Gaza from its border? I guess it's just not fashionable to criticize Egypt. But again, I digress.