The Times leader uses the crisis to point fingers at the lack of leadership from the EU coming at a time when the Presidential changeover only now swings into effect.
Here was an opportunity for the EU to take a diplomatic lead. The interregnum in the US, where the serving President is seeing out his time but his successor is still 15 days from inauguration, created a diplomatic vacuum. Hostilities in Gaza demanded a mature and united diplomatic response. But behind the perfunctory call for a ceasefire issued on Saturday, what it saw instead was an unseemly squabble.
The Indy echoes the call
With neither Israel nor Hamas in any mood to countenance a ceasefire, however, it is also worth noting that appeals from the outside would carry more conviction if they also came with some positive and practical suggestions for what might happen next. So far, in public at least, constructive proposals have been conspicuous by their absence. Indeed, circumstances have almost conspired to leave the field for such initiatives vacant.
The Guardian beleives that Israel's eventual victory will be hollow
even if the Israeli army succeeds in its aims and destroys Hamas both as an army and as an organisation, it will have also destroyed the last remnants of government in the strip. Israel would have fought its way back to where it was in 1994, before the advent of the Palestinian authority, and back in direct control of Gaza. That is plainly not what it wants, because it would mean re-assuming control of 1.5 million Gazans as well. Putting a proxy Palestinian government in place would be just as fraught. Destroying the infrastructure of Hamas's rule in Gaza would also wreck the effective government on which any future ceasefire would depend. To take one small but relevant example, half of Gaza's ambulances have already been destroyed.
The Telegraph recognises that
A determined enemy lies concealed in Gaza's tangled warren of alleys and, for the first time, the struggle will now be on relatively equal terms, creating a significant danger of heavy losses among Israeli forces. This makes it all the more imperative for the government to set out clear goals, achieve them with minimum loss of life on both sides and then leave Gaza as swiftly as possible.
However
Sadly, Mr Olmert has allowed a degree of confusion about his country's war aims to emerge. Fighting talk from his defence minister, Ehud Barak, of a "war to the bitter end" has given the impression that Israel seeks to destroy Hamas or, at the very least, overthrow its administration in Gaza. In reality, Israel's war aims are almost certainly confined to halting the rocket attacks which have sown such misery in its southern cities. Mr Olmert should make clear that this defensive measure is the only objective.
The Mail has
grave doubts, too, over the likely consequences of the invasion for the Israeli people themselves.and asks
Isn’t there a strong risk that, far from making them safer, it will subject them to even greater danger in the long term, by heightening tensions in the region?
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