Gaza invasion conspicuously lacks ‘exit strategy’

It's very simple. They intend to stay.

By any conventional military standards, Israel's reinvasion of parts of the Gaza Strip this week had mission creep written all over it, even before the first tank rolled up to the border and began firing.

According to the Israeli defence establishment, the primary purpose of Operation Summer Rain is to free Corporal Gilad Shalit, captured by Palestinian militants on June 25.

But so far as anyone, including Israeli intelligence, knows, the 19-year-old tank gunner is being held in the south of the strip, far from the present bloody incursion.

And the killing of at least 27 Palestinians since Corporal Shalit's capture, reportedly including six civilians, is unlikely to increase his captors' wish to free him alive and with nothing in return, as Israel demands.

The second rationale for the attack is to prevent Palestinian militants from firing homemade rockets into Israel, as some groups have done ever since Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in September last year.

Yet a previous Israeli invasion of the northern rocket-launching zone in 2004 — Operation Days of Repentance — killed more than 120 Palestinians, including scores of civilians, but failed to prevent the rocket fire even when operations were still under way.

I guess that settles it then. The Israelis are lying. But, that is beside the point. The real point is that WE, the American people, are financing their lies and their invasion - and by extension the death of every Palestinian killed in the process.

BTW, flip to page 3 of the report and you'll find that the timeline for the escalation of violence begins with the 'kidnapping' of Gilad, NOT the massacre of a family of eight on a beach and three Palestinian children a week later.