The next step (Gideon Levy)

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"The vast majority cheered loudly, the negligible minority shouted in silence, like a whistler in the dark. The overwhelming majority only wanted more and more, the inconsequential minority wanted only to stop. The absolute majority gorged, ordering pizzas and scenes of the bombing by VOD, and some stood on the rooftops opposite Gaza with their children to watch the massacre with their own eyes. The trifling minority tried to protest, cringing with shame and feelings of guilt at every image that arrived from Gaza.

Not since the summer of 1967 have we had such a uniform, brainwashed chorus - and back then it was not so nationalist and bestial, insensitive and blind. But now, as the dust clears over the ruins and there are not enough bandages to cover all the wounds; with the cemeteries full and the hospitals bursting; as the cripples, the incapacitated, the amputees, the traumatized and the bereaved, the thousands of wounded and tens of thousands of newly homeless try helplessly to rehabilitate whatever they can, the time has come to respond and say what can be done. Now it is time to elaborate on the alternative to the cruelest and most brutal war in Israel's history, and one of the most unnecessary.

First, there is a different path, which Israel has never embarked on. Neither Oslo nor the disengagement was a sufficient step. With war the initial means and unrestrained violence the preferred choice, we have almost always spoken only with force, our only language. By force and stratagems we made war, another war. The force was supplied by the Israel Defense Forces, the stratagems by the media. Alternative proposals were inevitably condemned. Second, it is impossible to start from today. We have to remember the context, and the context is always twisted and distorted out of all recognition.

The cease-fire with Hamas came into effect on June 19, 2008. It was received in Israel coldly and with the sourness reserved for every political move. Ehud Olmert said it was "fragile and short-term," as in a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the months that followed we were fed terrifying reports and security analyses about the arms buildup by Hamas, about the damage done by the cease-fire, the dangers awaiting us because of it and the benefit derived from it by Hamas, only by Hamas. The fact that the residents of the south experienced a period of calm, almost without Qassam rockets, was blurred. Hundreds of tunnels beneath Rafah, most of them intended to supply oxygen to besieged Gaza - to which, even when the crossings were opened, Israel prohibited the entry of most of the goods people need, from notebooks for children to cement for construction - were described here as being exclusively a conduit for the supply of arms: demonic tunnels in which everything short of nuclear weapons was being smuggled. The naked truth about what was smuggled through the tunnels was revealed in the war: pitiful, meager munitions.

The cease-fire, it should be recalled, included an agreement to open the crossings. After the agreement came into effect, Israel stated that the crossings would remain closed temporarily because the Karni crossing was "unfit." Afterward came the "zipper" method, the closing of the crossings after every mortar shell, the old carrot-and-stick approach. Yes, there were Qassams and mortar shells - few, unnecessary, barren - which should have been forgiven with wisdom. In any event, the major violation of the cease-fire, which included a ground incursion in order to blow up a house and a tunnel and to kill six Hamas men, occurred on November 4 and was a purely Israeli act. After that, everything started to deteriorate quickly, as we foresaw, as we apparently wanted."

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