Strong circumstantial evidence is slowly emerging into the mainstream media that confirms that, far from Hamas provoking Israel, it has been Israel that has been deliberately provoking Hamas into rocketing and mortaring southern Israel specifically in order to provide a casus belli for Israel to attack the Gaza. In doing so, this makes Israel guilty of using its own people as ‘victims’ for political purposes.

Israel was planning for the Gaza operation even as it was negotiating a ceasefire according to reports in Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz who says that during this period Israel had been carrying out a massive operational deception and have deliberately been misleading the public. It has now come to light that Israel has had a training facility close to Gaza where the army has been training for an operation against the Gaza Strip. This base has been running for some eighteen months. In order to ensure that Hamas provide a casus belli on cue Israel deliberately broke the ceasefire on 4 November 2008 by launching an aerial strike into the Gaza that killed six Palestinians. The Israelis knew that Palestinian fighters would respond by launching rockets and mortars, mostly ineffectually, into Israel.

On top of that, Israel’s long-term policy of provocation by deprivation, as noted by Brian Eno in his piece, Stealing Gaza: An Experiment in Provocation, added fuel to the Gazan peoples frustrations and desperation over their treatment by the Israelis. With a compliant domestic media and a well-controlled Western mainstream media headed up by the likes of Rupert Murdoch’s news empire, the Israelis were able to con the world and their own people into believing that it was Hamas who were to blame entirely for the rockets and mortars that fell on southern Israel.

The fact is this; the Israeli government itself is entirely to blame for what Israeli deaths and destruction has been caused. The Israeli government has deliberately and purposefully manipulated and provoked Hamas to kill, maim and terrorise Israeli citizens specifically for the purpose of providing an excuse to invade and occupy the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli Zionist government might just as well have launched the rockets and mortars themselves at their own people