The Hamas-led Palestinian government discussed in its meeting earlier this week the situation in the occupied territories in light of Israel's pre-offensive threats to invade Gaza Strip and assassinate its leaders, including ministers.
The Palestinians are gravely concerned Israel might be preparing for a full-scale invasion and is just using the abduction of the Israeli soldier as a justification.
Turning up the pressure on the Palestinians to the release Gilad Shalit, the captive soldier, Israel started bombing several positions and areas in Gaza, forcing thousands of Palestinians to abandon the city. It even sent its warplanes low over the house of Syrian President Bashar Al ssad, claiming he shelters two Hamas leaders.
Israeli jets also knocked out electricity and water supplies for most of the 1.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip. The terrorist Israeli army also destroyed three bridges.
And on Friday the occupation's warplanes hit the Palestinian Interior Ministry, setting it ablaze.
Kidnapping Shalit was the Palestinians' last resort after trying every possible means of pressure to have their sons and daughters out of the Israeli jails.
They were forced to resort to kidnapping Israeli soldiers after the Jewish state showed no cooperation, an article on The Guardian's Comment Is Free section stated earlier.
On June 26, Palestinian Qassam Brigades, Hamas' military section, Al Nasser Salaheddine Brigades, the Popular Resistance Committees' military section, and Islam Army demanded Israel to release all Palestinian women and children held in its prisons if they wish to receive any information about Shalit.
The three factions issued a joint statement asserting that the proposal comes in response to various mediations but didn't say if Shalit was killed.
Instead of negotiating to free the abducted 19-year-old solider, the Israelis decided that he is worth more dead than alive.
The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and his defence minister, both feel being tested; only seek to prove that they are as tough and fearsome as their predecessors were.
Vice Premier Shimon Peres knows all about this. Grapes of Wrath operation carried out against Lebanon in 1996 under the leadership of Peres was motivated by a similar drive, and so was his decision earlier that year to assassinate Yahya Ayyash, Hamas' chief bomb-maker.
But Israel paid a huge price for both crimes.
Bombing bridges; seizing an airport that has been in ruins for years; destroying a power station, plunging large parts of the Gaza Strip into darkness in prelude to an all-out invasion, shows that Israeli leaders never heed lessons of the past.
Same tactics used in the past didn't result in any positive outcome.
Lebanon in the 80s, Jenin in 2002 and in Gaza all the way up to Gaza withdrawal in August 2005 didn't end resistance against occupation, or stop the bloodshed on both sides. And as a result the conflict is as bitter as it has always been.
Reusing same old tactics displays the racist nature of Israel's ruling elite who don't recognise the Palestinians' right to equal human dignity. For the Israelis, such a concept does not even seem to exist.
Thus, the presence of more than 10,000 Palestinian prisoners of war in Israeli jails, including hundreds of women and children, is deemed to be of no value whatsoever, whereas taking one Israeli soldier into captivity resulted in a major offensive against thousands of defenceless Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel is unlikely to try to save the captive soldier through a military operation- It tried that in the past but failed miserably.
When Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades took captive Nachshon Vaxman, an Israeli soldier in the Golani Infantry Brigade in 1994, demanding the Israelis release all Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the safe return of the soldier, an Israeli army unit raided the building housing the captors and the soldier but failed in its mission. The hostage, his captors and the Israeli unit's commander were killed in the process.
Punishing thousands of Palestinians living in Gaza will do neither Israel nor its captured soldier much good.
What Israel should consider instead is end this madness and return to negotiation table.
The Palestinians' demands are legitimate. Shalit is a prisoner of war, and his life is not much valuable that the 10,000 Palestinians held captive by Israel.
Thus an exchange seems fair and sensible.
Agencies
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