To my Hamas hosts, Israel's operation in Lebanon in 2006, or its attack on Gaza in 2009, were huge victories. "We are now winning. We fight Israel and want to fight again and again." This strong belief that they are victorious is in itself a loss for Israel: It has failed to weaken Hamas.

Fighting and killing have been a curse to Israel's existence over the last six decades. The trajectory has been to make Israel weaker and more hated around the world; to popularize the ideology of radicalism amid Muslims and fuel anti-Americanism in the Middle East. Israel cannot kill itself into security or survival. It must learn the language of peace and co-existence.

For how much longer will we in the West continue to damage our own standing in the nearly 2 billion-strong Muslim world as our ally Israel delivers dead children and destroyed schools to Muslim television screens?

all from - edition.cnn.com/2014/08/04/opinion/husai...index.html?hpt=hp_t1

... and yet another excellent article -

“Israel is the only nation in the West that occupies another people,” writes Shavit. “On the other hand, Israel is the only country in the West that is existentially threatened. Both occupation and intimidation make the Israeli state unique. Intimidation and occupation are the twin pillars of our condition.”

Shavit loves his country yet does not shy from describing the blood that flowed when his people took possession of it. He’s not alone in that uncomfortable place. The historian Benny Morris’ account, “1948,” is similarly unsparing of the brutalities that accompanied the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians into permanent exile as the new state struggled to be born.

Gaza war may just be a taste of whats to come -
blogs.reuters.com/john-lloyd/2014/08/04/...te-of-whats-to-come/