It is difficult because Israel's objective is to stop the Palestinian rockets. And the Palestinian objective is to retain the ability to fire rockets at Israeli civilians until that glorious day when Palestine is Judenfrei. Until a big friend has nukes, you do what you can with high explosives.
A ceasefire won't solve that problem. But it will stop the rockets for a while, after Hamas has been hammered enough to worry more about their lives and rule than they are about having one more shot at an Israeli civilian neighborhood.
So the Obama administration continues to seek a halt to fighting. Which must be such a shock to Secretary of State Clinton since the last Gaza Winter War ended just as Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the United States. So the rocket arsenal Hamas is using was put together in the shadow of the Cairo Outreach. Fancy that.
It seems more likely that Israel will not go in to Gaza, unless the Israelis are really trying hard to make Egypt feel like Israel is doing all it can to avoid a ground campaign. Hard to say. If the Israelis haven't gone in after a week of air bombardment, the odds of a ground incursion go way down, I think.
But unless Israeli troops are standing on the ground when a ceasefire is eventually agreed to, it will be easier for Hamas and the global Left to obscure who was the ass-kicker and who was the ass-kickee.
Air power is outstanding, if focused by good intelligence, as an instrument for a good old-fashioned punitive expedition that avoids casualties among your own forces. But it can only inflict pain and relies on your enemy deciding it has endured enough pain secure in the knowledge that ground will not change hands and at worst you dust yourself off (few Hamas leaders will fail to survive to bombardments--especially if they've fled to Egypt for the duration), rebuild your palace, and continue the war against the enemy when you get resupplied by Iran and Sudan.
So the Palestinians will continue to wage war on Israel to seek their extermination. And Israel will have to continue to mount punitive expeditions to stop the Palestinians from actively attacking too often to achieve that glorious day when "death to the Jews" is a historical reference rather than a rallying cry.
Yet Israel is the bad guy that inspires private warfare against Israel by the Anonymous hacker collective:
Anonymous - the multifaceted movement of online rebels and self-described “hacktivists,” spearheaded the campaign against Israel, distributing press releases and videos denouncing what it described as an “insane attack” against Gaza. The cyber onslaught began after Israel launched airstrikes against Gaza last week following persistent rocket fire.
Yes, spending four years gathering rockets for the chance to kill a few Jews rather than trying to build a prosperous future for Palestinians in Gaza is "sane" while trying to
The asymmetric diagnoses are disturbing.
UPDATE: The punitive expedition is over:
Israel and the Hamas militant group reached a cease-fire agreement Wednesday to end the fiercest round of fighting in nearly four years, promising to halt attacks on each other and ease an Israeli blockade constricting the Gaza Strip.
Egypt's foreign minister, Mohammed Kamel Amr, said the deal was set to take effect at 9 p.m. local time. (2 p.m. EDT), capping days of intense efforts that drew the world's top diplomats into the fray. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood next to Amr as he announced the breakthrough at a news conference in Cairo.
This is what passes for peace in the area. The Israelis have made the pain of firing at Israeli civilians greater than the joy of firing at Israeli civilians. For a time, anyway.
UPDATE: Without a ground operation, Israel may not have rubbed Hamas' nose in the mess it left Palestinians to impress upon them the fact that they got their asses kicked:
"Allahu akbar, (God is greatest), dear people of Gaza you won," blared mosque loudspeakers in the enclave as the truce took effect. "You have broken the arrogance of the Jews."
Fifteen minutes later, wild celebratory gunfire echoed across the darkened streets of Gaza, which gradually filled with crowds waving Palestinian flags. Ululating women leaned out of windows and fireworks lit up the sky.
Hamas leaders welcomed the agreement, calling it a triumph for armed resistance, and thanking Egypt for its role.
To be fair, Hezbollah claimed victory after 2006 and they've been quiet since then, in the post-conflict reality that they took one on the chin despite the fact that Israel failed to really hit them as hard as Israel could have.
Give the Gazans time to contemplate what their victory cost them. Ululation may be hard to come by in a couple weeks.
