Israel threatens to target Hamas leaders
Ehud Olmert continues to blunder through the Middle East like a bull in a china shop, now threatening to kill the Palestinian Prime Minister unless the young Israeli soldier captured by Palestinian militants is released.
An Israeli air strike has already destroyed his offices, Israel say to send a signal that they regard Hamas as responsible for the fate of Gilad Shalit, the 19 year old Israeli soldier taken hostage by Palestinian rebels.
One has to wonder why the Israelis - if they really want to ensure this young soldiers release - are carrying out so many inflammatory actions that are likely to produce the very opposite result.
Israel have so far arrested 63 members of the Hamas government, have attacked the power station that supplies most of Gaza's electricity and have cut off the water supply to the area. The latter two quite clearly being acts of collective punishment which constitute war crimes.
Israel have always indulged in disproportionate responses, but even by their own standards, their actions over the past few days have been breathtaking. Israel's chief of staff, Dan Halutz, may now find when he travels abroad that he has joined the list of Israeli generals wanted for war crimes.
Why have Israel done this?
It becomes impossible not to consider that Israel are using young Mr Shalit as a pawn in a much larger game, the objective of which is to ensure that Israel are never forced by their American partners to negotiate with Hamas a return to the 1967 border that Israel finds unacceptable.
Israel have for many years managed to convince the Americans that they were the party seeking peace but that they lacked a partner in the Middle East that they could negotiate with.
When Abbas called Hamas' bluff by threatening a referendum - and forced them to implicitly recognise the Jewish state - the ground was laid in which the Israelis would finally have their long desired "partner for peace" and meaningful negotiations could begin to take place.
The Israeli reaction appears to be to liquidate Hamas by any means rather than allow this.
It would appear that the fate of Mr Shalit matters less to Israel than the larger objective of destroying any possibility of being forced to negotiate.
If the Palestinian militants had any sense - and I'm not sure that they do - they would return Gilad Shalit immediately, and unharmed, back to Israel. They should realise that holding him favours Israel's interests and not their own.
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