Why has Israel launched the deadliest attacks on Palestinian territory since the 1967 Six Day War?
Israel’s onslaught is a reprisal for a week-long barrage of rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza. Israel says it had to safeguard the lives in towns bordering the strip. Palestinians, and many others, believe the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also ordered the raids to achieve what his government had failed to achieve through other means: the removal from power of Hamas, the Islamist political movement elected to run Gaza in 2006, which it accuses of being controlled by Iran and Syria.
