"No savior from without can come, To those that live and are enslaved. Their own messiah they must be, And play the savior and the saved." Simeon Samuel Frug, Jewish Russian poet, 1860 -1916

Big talk Bibi. When the Liberation forces march into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, you'll be talking out of the other side of your mouth.

Israel should point out to the world and to residents of Gaza that Hamas has a much better defence system than Iron Dome, one that is 100% effective and costs nothing, but they are choosing not to use it. All they have to do is take their finger off the trigger, stop firing missiles, and israeli attacks will immediately stop.

Flatten the area and move the border further south. Follow up with bulldozers. This is a positive step in the right direction to reestablish the original borders of Israel.

if it makes enough of the world angry. Israel is NOT self sufficient in food or energy. If either the food or the energy gets cut off, the Israeli economy STOPS and israelis start to starve. Sure the American congress critters will try to help, but after a short period of time, the US public, which has gotten ZERO help from the congress critters over the last five years, will rebel and the congress critters will have to cut off Israel to save their own hides. It is a BIG mistake to assume that the US will protect Israel forever.

I Quote - Israel's message to Hamas: We control the escalation Comment - why should Israel give Hamas any message at all ? Hamas should be Exterminated without any message. This Tit for Tat game, Israel will lose in the long run, slowly bleading to death. The interrnational comunity will build up Gaza after every Israeof striking it. Israel cant win when Hamas can come back time after time again. Arn.Sweden

hamas and its terror brothers must be left in a situation where they cannot start another missile war against israel.

go to hell with your nonsense about concern for ground actions. The whole of bloody gaza is guilty of supporting hamas. these are not innnocent bystanders. As for hams, since you are bravely firing rockets and winning according to you, why go for ceasefire. keep fighting, fire all your 20000 missiles, take your actions, fight it out to the end. if you win, you win palestine and then you can do what you want. if you lose, you are dead!

Hamas is not an existential threat to Israel. If the West, the EU, the US, and the UN stopped supporting the travesty of the Palestinian Authority, giving them monies which frees-up other monies for terrorism, men like Haniyeh and Abbas would collapse in a few months. The West (esp. Britain) created much of the mess here, and the US has supported terrorists and still supports the terror kings of Sa'udia. And still the West is the place of the vast majority of production of anti-Semitic literature and Web sites. And the source of the worst pogroms and mass-murder of Jews. The West doesn't want to stop anything, really, but Israel. Not that they love the Hamas or PLO guys either. Add to the mess the immoral collusion of Russia and China, and their satellites like Iran and NKorea, and voila! enough mess for several more decades. So how does tiny Israel get around US blackmail? Who else sells jet fighters? Spare parts? Maybe time to turn to Ha-Shem, God, the Guardian of Israel. All the rest is charade.

The US is not and never has been Israel's protector. How about our darkest moments in 1948? US embargo. The US government has no loyalty to Israel. Look closely at the State Dept. and its institutionalised anti-Semitism. They only like anti-Zionist Jews. We've had lots of conflict with the US, but perhaps these things don't get discussed in America the way they do here. We've have never fully trusted ANY US president. Not one...

This is not an interesting subject of an article. It should have been HOW A TINY COMMUNITY CALLED GAZA WERE ABLE TO FIRE THEIR ROCKETS INTO TEL AVIV and all parts of Israel.

We luv u so plz leave ur buildings now and take shelter in schools, mosques or the Aqsa Martyr Hospital, we promise never to hurt you darlings! We want you to be ready for more terrorist activities in future! Love, Yours always, Uncle Booboo

What is the proposed next stage? Is it a stage in which there would be heavy Israeli casualties? Is there a possibility for Israel continuing the fighting for weeks until the rocket activity is down close to zero? Is there then the possibility of prolonged partial occupation of a buffer zone in Gaza?