The lessons of the last Gaza war, fought over 22 days between December 2008 and January 2009 amid even greater controversy, must not be forgotten. Then, responding to international pressure, Israel unilaterally withdrew, claiming to have achieved its objectives, while Hamas announced its own ceasefire. The terrorists' pledge endured only a few days. After that, they were back in business with their cross-border rocket, mortar and missile assaults on Israeli civilian centres.
The current conflict is an inevitable consequence of that failure to secure an enduring ceasefire. It would be tragic if the same happened again. Hamas and its apologists are displaying a lamentable failure to appreciate the fundamental reality that, as Barack Obama says, there is not a country on earth that would tolerate rockets and missiles being fired at its people day after day, year in, year out, from across its borders. Yet Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal insists it is not the aggressor, and that it is Israel that started the war. "Whoever started the war (Israel) must end it," he says in a Herculean inversion of reality. Officials representing Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, in another absurdity, have compared Hamas's thuggish leaders with George Washington and Charles de Gaulle "because they resisted foreign occupation by armed force". And on the ABC's 7.30, Palestinian lawyer and former peace negotiator Diana Buttu has declared: "Israel, as an occupying power, is under an obligation to protect the Palestinians . . . (it's) not the role of Palestinians to provide Israel security; it's the other way around."
With that mindset among Hamas's backers, it's hard to be optimistic about the prospects for a sustainable truce. That is why Israel must pin Hamas down to an enforceable deal -- a genuine, durable peace grounded in reality, not the fantasy world of Hamas and its apologists.
