KEY POINTS:
Israel's goals in the Gaza conflict had been achieved "and even more", said the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, in declaring a unilateral ceasefire. His comment would have had far more substance had not Hamas responded by firing 17 rockets into Israel, a final flourish before it announced a week-long ceasefire.
If Israel's military offensive was, as it claimed, about effecting change, nothing much seemed to have changed. Indeed, by any realistic yardstick, Israel has achieved very little while creating rods for the back of both itself and the world.
Certainly, Israel can point to having blunted Hamas' fighting capability, thereby buying itself time. But, politically, Hamas remains in control of the Gaza Strip and, if anything, is in a stronger position. Most significantly, it is now the focus of international attention and Palestinian nationalism, displacing Mahmound Abbas' more moderate Fatah, which it ejected from Gaza in 2006. This heightened profile suggests that reconciling the two factions will
be even more difficult.
Such detail will not stop the Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, and the Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, insisting the offensive was a victory. With Mr Olmert stepping down, the pair, the leaders of the Labour Party and the ruling centrist Kadima Party, respectively, face a general election on February 10. This conflict had much to do with their desire to demonstrate to Israelis that they could act decisively to deter the country's enemies, a situation rendered
necessary by the failure to crush Hizbollah two years ago. Increasingly, however, as rockets continued to fall in Israel and the war in Gaza bore a greater resemblance to that in the Lebanon, their gambit appeared doomed to failure.
Opinion polls continue to suggest the conservative former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will win the election comfortably. That also bodes ill. Mr Netanyahu, the Likud Party leader, was antagonistic to international peace proposals during his last term as Israel's leader from 1996-99, and opposed Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza after 38 years of occupation. His return as Prime Minister would emphasise the extent of missed opportunity implicit in
President George W. Bush's disengagement from the Middle East for most of his two terms in the White House.
Most immediately, the task is to turn the ceasefire into a longer-term settlement. A key will be finding a way to stop the smuggling of weapons into Gaza through tunnels that run beneath its border with Egypt. Israel has suggested Cairo is ready to play a greater role in this. Pointedly, however, Egypt has said it will not permit international monitors on its side of the border. That could jeopardise any prospect of preventing Hamas re-arming. It would also make
Israel reticent about Palestinian demands for the reopening of crossing points to Gaza, bringing an end to a blockade that has cut its 1.5 million people off from the outside world.
The further suffering of those people over the past three weeks has earned Israel widespread condemnation. The respective death tolls - more than 1200 Palestinians, at least half of them civilians, and 13 Israelis - speak volumes of a disproportionate response.
Any ideas that President-elect Barack Obama might have harboured about a broader Middle East peace process will have to be shelved while the immediate problem of Gaza is solved. And this will have to be achieved with the probability of a more hardline government in Jerusalem and the certainty of a greater stridency amid the strengthened ranks of Hamas. Israel has not only achieved very little in Gaza. It has made the Middle East, and the world, a more
dangerous place.
