Shimon Peres
For The Washington Post

There is no shortage of opinions when it comes to Middle East affairs, and the recent events in Gaza have not muted them. A minority of Middle East pundits have recently emerged as advocates for a one-state solution, which would undermine Israel's legitimacy and internationally recognized right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state in the land of my forefathers. Having personally witnessed the remarkable progress we have made with the Palestinian Authority in recent years, I believe that a two-state solution is not only the best resolution to this age-old conflict but one within our reach.

The one-state solution has enough intrinsic flaws to render it no solution at all. From Israel's perspective, it is not possible for the Jewish people to accept an arrangement that signifies the end of the existence of a Jewish state. From the Palestinians' perspective, they should not be denied the opportunity to take their national destiny into their own hands.

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Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, right, greets Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday.

Fawaz A. Gerges
The Los Angeles Times

Now that the guns have fallen silent and the dust is settling over Gaza, it is time to revisit the received wisdom in Israel, the United States and some European quarters that Hamas is a monolithic, Al Qaeda-like terrorist organization bent on Israel's destruction and that, therefore, Israel has no choice but to isolate Hamas and use overwhelming force to overcome it.

In fact, there is substantial evidence to the contrary. Far from a monolith, there are multiple clashing viewpoints and narratives within Hamas. Over the years, I have interviewed more than a dozen Hamas leaders inside and outside the Palestinian territories. Although, on the whole, Hamas' public rhetoric calls for the liberation of all historic Palestine, not only the territories occupied in 1967, a healthier debate occurs within.

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A family sleeps outside their destroyed house in Jabalia's Ezbet Abed Rabbo district in northern Gaza.

Karl Penhaul
CNN Correspondent

Huge freshly-printed posters were beginning to appear on billboards around Gaza City. The banners depicted masked fighters firing heavy machine guns or red-tipped rockets.

The war had ended just three or four days before. These were signs Gaza's fighting factions were still very much in business and keen to portray their campaign of the last three weeks as a victory against Israel.

CNN's producer in Gaza had been working his contacts. He's well acquainted with Gaza's underbelly.

For several days now he had got word that the fighting factions he was reaching out to were too busy to meet. They were regrouping and retooling just in case the ceasefire didn't hold.

Then after hours of waiting one morning, Abu Rahma got a call. The northern Gaza commander of the Salaheddin Brigades was ready to meet.

We picked our way through Gaza's backstreets, still strewn with rubble.

Young men in civilian clothes stood on street corners on the lookout. Gazans call these spotters "Weierweis" (pronounced "warweers"), after a popular make of walkie-talkie they use to relay messages up the chain of command.

At the city limits, a contact meets us and leads us into an orange grove, like the many that stretch from here up to the Israeli border.

We're told to turn off cell phones and take out the batteries, an attempt to avoid what they fear could be electronic surveillance by the Israeli military. Under the low hanging branches, six militants have taken up positions and camouflaged themselves with foliage.

The Salaheddin Brigades are part-funded by Hamas and fight in close coordination with them. In fact they're the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) – a mix of Islamic factions.

Since they were created in 2000, they've gained a reputation as hardcore fighters. They've frequently launched rockets into Israel. In 2003 they were blamed for ambushing a U.S. diplomatic convoy, killing three security guards and wounding a diplomat. And in June 2006 the Brigades claimed joint responsibility for burrowing under the Gaza-Israeli border and capturing an Israeli army corporal, Gilad Shalit, who is still missing.

With a red and white keffiyeh scarf wrapped around his neck and sporting a close-cut beard I'm introduced to Abu Jamal, the northern Gaza commander for the Salaheddin Brigades. He's clutching an American-made M4 assault rifle.

His comrades are armed with AK-47s, two with rocket-propelled grenades.

This isn't exactly a show of strength. This is a small cell, I counted seven men including the area commander. But they display a certain bravado about their exploits against the Israelis.

The group talks how they fought guerrilla-style against the Israelis using sniper fire and ambushes to try and stall the Israeli advance and on occasion getting in behind Israeli lines to continue firing rockets at southern Israeli towns. They say they survived for three weeks moving quickly and eating little more than a handful of dates and drinking water.

The full facts of the militant campaign are difficult to independently verify. The Israeli Defense Forces say they faced hit-and-run attacks but fewer pitched battles than expected.

Abu Jamal said 17 brigade fighters were killed in the conflict. For its part Hamas says it lost fewer than 50 fighters.

The Israeli Defense Forces puts the number of dead militants as high as "several hundred" and said 10 Israeli soldiers were killed.

Abu Jamal and his comrades say they believe they could have bogged the Israelis down in hand-to-hand urban warfare if they had pushed deeper into the cities. The Israelis say they halted the advance of the ground incursion when they did because they had achieved their main objectives.

Among the Israeli targets was the home of Abu Jamal. He briefly took me there as family members picked through the ruins. The IDF clearly had pinpoint intelligence on where he lived but he figured he was on their hit-list and had left along with his family. Now he was joking that having no home to return to would force him to spend more time with his "resistance" comrades.

When talk turned to the political reaction to the war, Abu Jamal and his fighters were clearly disgusted with what they saw as a lack of "brotherhood" from Arab neighbors but they did say they felt they'd discovered a new champion in an unexpected place: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Chavez expelled the Israeli ambassador to Caracas and was forthright in condemning the Israeli offensive.

From that encounter with this cell of the Salaheddin Brigades it was clear their fighting resolve remained intact. For a guerrilla unit every day it survives is a victory of sorts in the face of the overwhelming firepower the Israelis had in their arsenal.

It's clear too the Salaheddin Brigades see their fight as a religious mission and that the recent conflict was just the prelude to a bigger fight they believe they will one day wage.

"In the past we threw stones and then had small guns," said Abu Jamal. "Now we will move forward until we finally bring all Muslims to pray in Jerusalem."

A Palestinian man Monday prays in the rubble of his home, destroyed during Israel's offensive in Gaza.

Morgan Meis
The Smart Set

Say what you like about Israelis, they know how to play the game. I'm speaking of the humanity game. It's a game with specific rules and expectations in Western civilization. Its centerpiece, the very core of the game, is self-reflection. Demonstrating your humanity (since the Enlightenment, at least, but the roots go back to the beginning) is less about doing and more about reflecting on what you've done. The basic formula is already there at the Delphic Oracle: Know thyself. The trick of it, the reason that the humanity game is hard to play, is that the quest for self-knowledge does not lead to clarity, but down ever deeper into the muck. Knowledge, in the Western tradition, is very much about its limits. Knowing ourselves is thus partly about knowing the infinity of an enigma.

Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir is a “know thyself” kind of movie. It is obsessed with memory, and memory is the thread around which a self is built. You can't know yourself without memory. The problem is that Folman doesn't remember. Crucially, he doesn't remember anything from his youthful days in the Israeli army when he was part of the Israeli incursion into Lebanon. He decides that he needs to remember, and tracks down a number of his fellow soldiers in order to reconstruct that past. The story is told in animated form. It's a nice move. It creates a distance from the reality of lived experience. It is like drifting through someone else's dream.

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Israeli tanks prepare to leave Gaza on Monday.

Stephen M. Walt
Foreign Policy

Many supporters of Israel will not criticize its behavior, even when it is engaged in brutal and misguided operations like the recent onslaught on Gaza. In addition to their understandable reluctance to say anything that might aid Israel's enemies, this tendency is based in part on the belief that Israel's political and military leaders are exceptionally smart and thoughtful strategists who understand their threat environment and have a history of success against their adversaries. If so, then it makes little sense for outsiders to second-guess them.

This image of Israeli strategic genius has been nurtured by Israelis over the years and seems to be an article of faith among neoconservatives and other hardline supporters of Israel in the United States. It also fits nicely with the wrongheaded but still popular image of Israel as the perennial David facing a looming Arab Goliath; in this view, only brilliant strategic thinkers could have consistently overcome the supposedly formidable Arab forces arrayed against them.

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A family in Gaza returns to their home.

Children in Gaza fill water containers during the cease-fire.

Cassandra Nelson
Mercy Corps

January 19

It is the second day of the ceasefire. The Mercy Corps staff in Gaza are all very happy with the news. No one is sure if it will last, but for now I can hear the relief in their voices. Unfortunately, massive challenges and frustrations remain.

Despite the Israeli Prime Minister Olmert's comments saying aid would be distributed in Gaza, and Minister Herzog's press conference comments yesterday where he stated aid was being rushed in, most of the international aid community is still being denied access to Gaza.

Yesterday, I received good news—or so I thought. My name was cleared by the Israeli Defense Ministry to enter Gaza, along with dozens of other international aid workers.

I immediately set to work to organize the logistics for reaching Gaza City: a driver to pick me up – along with my colleague - on the other side of the border. I also had to coordinate with or local staff to set priorities for our first entrance into Gaza in months. The last time most expatriate aid workers were able to travel to Gaza was in November.

I also called the Israeli Defense Forces Coordination Liaison Administration to the Gaza strip (IDF-CLA) to arrange for our entry through the Erez border checkpoint. This is when the good news started to unravel.

I spent the entire afternoon dialing and re-dialing all the numbers we were given for the IDF-CLA. After hours of no-answer, I finally got a live person on the other side of the phone. The Lieutenant told me to call back at 9:00 PM and they would tell us if we could enter Gaza. I called at 9:00 and no answer. I called at 9:30 and no answer. I called at 10:30 and still no answer.

This morning I called at 7:30 am and reached someone. Again they told me they didn’t know if we would be allowed to cross the border and to call back at 8:40 am. At 8:40 I got through and was told to call the Major instead. When I reached the Major he told me we would not be allowed to access to Gaza today, despite the fact that the border would be open for other people to cross. He said to call back in the afternoon to see about our chances of entering tomorrow.

I quickly called the other major international aid organizations working here and found that they were being refused access to Gaza, too.

It is hard to understand why international aid workers are being denied access while journalists and others are being allowed to enter.

With an estimated 100,000 people displaced from their homes in Gaza, we are keenly aware of the need for humanitarian aid. Food and other essential items, such as formula and diapers for babies and toddlers, is needed. The number of local staff present in Gaza is not enough to meet the immediate needs.

Thousands of displaced people are attempting to go home – the shelters are overcrowded and families have nowhere to stay, so many are on-the-move. But they are facing terrible dangers as they go home to areas strewn with unexploded ordinances, missiles, shells and other ammunitions that did not explode but are still “live” and extremely dangerous. International aid teams who specialize in removing unexploded ordinances need immediate access to Gaza or more lives will be needlessly lost.

It is initially estimated that about 5,000 homes have been destroyed and over 20,000 homes are damaged. Families need immediate assistance and supplies including plastic sheeting to repair their homes.

But aid supply trucks are still not being allowed to enter in sufficient quantities. Saturday less than 20 humanitarian trucks were allowed entry. Sunday about 130 trucks entered, but this is the same number as was entering before the ceasefire. Much of the international aid community is incredibly frustrated that the Israeli authorities have not yet made good on their statements.

The Mercy Corps team has to make difficult decisions and work with the resources available. Our top priorities are families who have completely lost their homes in the bombings and the families who have had to flee their homes because they are located in hot spots and are too unsafe.

We are distributing the plastic sheeting we have in Gaza now, but it will be gone in the next couple days.

My teammates who have been living and working around the clock, under-fire, in Gaza throughout this ordeal need support and a rest. My colleague and I will be on the phone again tonight, trying to push for the permission to enter Gaza.

The ceasefire will enter day three tomorrow. How much longer can the Israeli authorities continue to deny international aid workers access to Gaza?

Click here for Cassandra's earlier blog posts.

Editor’s Note: Cassandra Nelson joined Mercy Corps in Afghanistan in 2002. She spends most of her time deployed in hotspots and hostile areas in need of humanitarian assistance. She has worked in Iraq, Darfur, Lebanon, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Liberia, North Korea, Sri Lanka, Banda Aceh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

Israeli tanks prepare to leave Gaza on Monday.

Paula Hancocks
CNN International Correspondent

Amongst the devastation in Gaza and horrific pictures of dead bodies being pulled from destroyed buildings, the argument of "who won the war" has already begun.

Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insists his country’s military objective was achieved and more. Israeli soldiers are filmed leaving the Gaza strip smiling and giving the victory sign. The Israeli casualty figure was lower than feared and public support was strong throughout.

No Palestinian civilian in Gaza won anything. Even if they survived, their loved ones survived and their house is intact, they have been through 22 days of absolute hell.

But Hamas claimed victory on behalf of the Palsetinian people. Former Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh says "this is not a victory for one faction, party or region. It is a victory for all the nation. The whole nation contributed..."

Hamas' military wing went one step further, claiming fewer than 50 of its fighters were killed... hundreds less than Israel claims. And militants fired around twenty rockets into Israel after the Jewish state's ceasefire came into effect Sunday morning, just to prove they still could.

Israel has claimed a victory in securing an agreement with the United States, a memorandum of understanding to prevent future smuggling of arms to Hamas and Israel's military believes it has destroyed the majority of smuggling tunnels between Egypt and Gaza.

But the bar of success was low for Israel this time around following a perceived failed war against Hezbollah in Lebanon two and a half years ago. The official view, shared by many on the streets of Israel, is the power of deterrence has been restored.

Ari Shavit, Haaretz newspaper journalist believes there is another winner, "In the war between Israel and Hamas the winner is Egypt, the real winners in this war are the arab moderates." He says, " The Middle East is no longer about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as such... there is a greater conflict now between the moderates and the extremists."

Only a part of wars today are fought on the battlefield, or in this case in the crowded streets of Gaza, the rest is won or lost on television screens and through public perception. The vast majority of Israelis see this as a military success, but public approval of Israel's operation – even among its strongest allies – could be undermined by a disturbingly high Palestinian civilian death toll and misery inflicted on a far wider target than Hamas.

Gaza residents return to find their homes crushed. CNN's Ben Wedeman reports.

Program Note: Be sure to tune in for the latest on the situation in Gaza tonight on AC360° at 10pm ET.

A Mercy Corp worker delivers aid to a family in Gaza.

Children in Gaza receive humanitarian aid from a Mercy Corps delivery.

Cassandra Nelson
Mercy Corps

January 15

It is noon and things have really started to deteriorate. I just found out some bad news about our staff in Gaza and the events that are unfolding there now.

We just heard from the director of the Mercy Corps office in Gaza City. She told us that Hazar, one of our field coordinators, and her family are stuck in their apartment in Gaza City. Their building is surrounded by Israeli tanks and there is plenty of shooting going on in their area. They are seeking cover in their corridor from the bullets; the shelling of nearby targets blew out the windows in their apartment.

They are anxiously waiting for the cease-fire to take effect which was announced for today from 11:00 to 15:00 to seek refuge elsewhere. It is just past noon and the shooting has not stopped.

The home of one our drivers, who has been transporting food items from the Kerem Shalom checkpoint and delivering them to our warehouse in Khan Younis, was completely destroyed last night. He spent the night in his truck in Rafah.

Right now we are tracking the status of the three trucks that we are expecting from Rafah filled with medical supplies to be delivered to the Red Crescent hospital in Khan Younis.

Also, an UNRWA compound in Gaza city appears to have been hit. UNRWA has suspended their operations for today.

I am in Ashkelon on the border and can hear and feel the bombardments every couple minutes. It is making the glass in my windows shake here and I cannot imagine the terror the people in Gaza are feeling now.

January 14th

The conflict has been raging for nearly three weeks but it seems much longer here. Everyone is exhausted and shocked that the fighting has been allowed to go on for so long, despite the staggering death tolls. More than 1000 dead. More than 300 children dead. Where has humanity gone?

Mercy Corps has managed to get two trucks of food aid into Gaza since the Israeli military operation started, but it has been a frustrating and extremely slow process to get the permissions from the Israeli authorities. The number of humanitarian supply trucks allowed to enter Gaza is entirely insufficient given the extraordinary need created by the conflict.

We have resorted to buying whatever items possible within Gaza to supplement our truck deliveries and meet the emergency needs of the families in Gaza more quickly. We have a team of 25 Mercy Corps staff who live and work in Gaza and they have been scouring the local market for any stock available. They have managed to procure blankets, mattresses, baby formula and other basic essentials, but we don’t expect that this is going to be possible for much longer. The availability of goods is rapidly decreasing and the prices are going through the roof.

The other problem we have is that there is simply no cash in Gaza. The banks are all closed; there are no ATMs and no way to get cash into our staff to buy the goods—or to pay their salaries. Even if we could send them checks there is nowhere to cash them. For the time being, everything is being done on credit, but that won’t last much longer either.

Now we are out distributing relief goods in the major areas of Gaza – Gaza City, Jabalia, Khan Younis and Rafah—our team is facing extremely dangerous conditions. Since the Israeli military action in Gaza began, four United Nations staff, plus four UN contractors in Gaza have been killed. One international humanitarian aid medical clinic was destroyed and several of their compounds have been damaged. At least four incidents have been reported of shooting near aid convoys. Not a minute passes that we are not concerned for the safety of our team.

Last week, the Israeli authorities instituted a daily temporary three-hour “lull” in fighting to provide humanitarian workers a chance to distribute aid, but this has not really helped. The slim window of time each day is not nearly enough to address the dire humanitarian situation on the ground and to transport aid deliveries from warehouses in the south of Gaza up to the north or other areas that need supplies.

Also, the time of the “lull” is constantly changing at the whim of the Israeli military—one day it starts at 9:00 am, the next day it is at 1:00 pm, and so on. We are only notified of the new timings moments before it begins, so we can’t organize our staff and distributions quickly enough to take advantage of the break in fighting.

Our distributions are very time consuming. In many cases our team goes door-to-door to ensure the most needy families are receiving aid. Many families are too afraid to venture out to distribution sites. This takes much longer than three hours, so our staff is usually out working well after the break in fighting has ended and the shelling and bombing have resumed.

Even with an increase in the number of workers packing and distributing, the vast needs of the people can't be met in this short time frame. 
Moreover, some fighting usually continues during the ‘lulls’ so humanitarian workers and the civilian population risk their lives moving around the Gaza Strip.

Working on the other side of the border where we take security, water, electricity and place to sleep and food for granted, I am overcome with admiration at the courage and strength of the Mercy Corps staff working inside Gaza. I hope that the Israeli authorities will respect the call of the United Nations and the international community to allow humanitarian aid workers to access Gaza so I can join my team.

Click here for more of Cassandra Nelson’s earlier blog posts.

Editor’s Note: Cassandra Nelson joined Mercy Corps in Afghanistan in 2002. She spends most of her time deployed in hotspots and hostile areas in need of humanitarian assistance. She has worked in Iraq, Darfur, Lebanon, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Liberia, North Korea, Sri Lanka, Banda Aceh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

The U.N. says Israeli artillery hit its aid headquarters compound in Gaza City, setting their buildings on fire.

A Save the Children food distribution in Gaza.

A widow and her children in Gaza after receiving food aid from Save the Children.

Editor’s Note: Osama Damo is deputy Gaza program manager with Save the Children. He, his wife and mother have now been displaced three times since the conflict began. They moved this week during to another three-bedroom apartment, where they now live with 15 other people, including five children.

Osama Damo
Save the Children

We dread nightfall. That’s when it really begins. And the last few nights have been something else.

The bombing has been so loud — though fortunately not as close as it was to our last refuge. It continues all night long.

Last night the center of Gaza City was the target — including a large public park and the cemetery. The joke around town is that even the dead are not safe.

We sleep when we can. If one child awakes, they are all up, screaming for the rest of the night. Their mothers try desperately to calm them.

We have been displaced again — for the third time — moving Sunday during the lull in fighting. Our group split up, one family staying behind in their home, and others finding space in the already-crowded houses of relatives.

Another Save the Children staff member, Ashraf, was displaced Monday night when his cousin’s house burned. Dozens of smoke bombs fell in his neighborhood, setting the place on fire. Nearby, a 15-story apartment building is now rubble. Its residents were given one-half hour to leave before it was struck. How do you decide what to take? You can grab papers and small valuables, but you have to abandon the rest.

I am so afraid my house is next. Yesterday morning I called a neighbor just to make sure that it still exists. It does.

Still, it is good to work — to feel productive instead of helpless. Our 11 staff here, working with local community-based organizations, have managed to provide 20,000 very vulnerable people, the majority of them children, with large food parcels over the last 11 days. We found two mothers in a shelter who had delivered babies in the last week and bought them baby clothes and supplies; they were sleeping on the floor and had nothing.

It is dangerous, and we have to find creative ways to reach people in need. When we couldn’t find trucks to deliver the food parcels from our warehouse to our distribution points in north and south Gaza (because the drivers were too afraid to get out on the roads), we used donkey carts and individual cars. It’s not as efficient, but so far we are managing, despite the odds.

It can take at least 12 hours to get the food parcels into families’ hands. The cease-fire, when and if it holds, lasts only three hours.

We saw the crisis coming and had bought food locally and stored it in our warehouse in Gaza before the conflict began. However, our food supply is running out. We are now looking to purchase more ready-to-eat foods. With no electricity available, families cannot use their cooking stoves. We will look to the open market if we cannot get food into Gaza.

So many challenges, so many people in need, but we are doing our best. And it is good to feel useful.

Read More of Osama Damo's blog posts here.

An Israeli pilot talks about trying to avoid civilian casualties. CNN's Nic Robertson reports the effort is failing.

CNN's Fionnuala Sweeney reports on the plight of ambulance workers in Gaza.

Mercy Corps workers loading trucks with food and medical supplies.

Mercy Corps workers preparing vehicles with humanitarian aid for delivery into Gaza.

Cassandra Nelson
Mercy Corps

Jerusalem

Dawn

I fought off my jet lag and drove south to the Gaza border with our Mercy Corps truck filled with desperately needed food aid.

Last week, the Israeli authorities announced there will be a daily three-hour ceasefire to allow aid organizations to move throughout the Gaza Strip, but we are still not very optimistic about it solving the problems. We’re still dealing with the same bureaucratic and twisted approval process for getting aid across the check point and into Gaza. The temporary 3-hour ceasefire is totally insufficient and only deals with aid delivery issues for items that are already inside Gaza. It does not help us get more aid into the territory in any way. The entire Israeli approval system must be improved so that we can get trucks to Gaza in less than a week.

One day last week, when we reached the Kerem Shalom border at about 9 AM there was a line of about 25 trucks waiting at the border for entry. After about a one-hour wait, the Israeli customs officials inspected the delivery and paperwork and asked several questions about where we bought our supplies.

The Mercy Corps vehicle was admitted into the unloading compound with several other aid trucks—all from various UN branches. The contents of the delivery were all on pallets that made unloading extremely easy with the assistance of a fork list.

After all the items were removed from the truck and placed on the pavement of the compound the security check began. Sniffing dogs were released to check the material. Next an Israeli border worker probed and stabbed every package with a long metal rod to check if anything might be hidden inside. I am assuming they were looking for stowaways among the rice bags, but I can’t imagine who would really be trying to get into Gaza when most people there would do anything to escape the constant shelling and bombing.

After the checks were completed all the Israeli workers and other observers and monitors were told to exit back to the Israel side of the border. Once the compound was empty of all people, the gates on the Israeli side were slammed shut.

Next, the gates on the Gaza side of the compound were opened, allowing the Palestinians to enter the compound and collect the delivery with their trucks. No trucks were allowed to drive from the Israeli side to the Gaza side. Everything was offloaded from the trucks on the Israel side and then reloaded onto different trucks on the Gaza side.

Israeli guards said that at no point in the process were Israelis and Palestinians from the Gaza side allowed to meet each other. I stood at the gate—on the Israeli side—and peered through the slats to watch the Palestinians load up our delivery.

When the transfer of aid was finished, I was relieved. We had finally made the delivery after so much work and our Gaza staff had received the items to distribute. But I had a lingering sadness knowing that the Gazans and the Israelis never came face-to-face at this border check. It makes me wonder how peace can be achieved when all humanity seemed to be absent.

Click here to access Cassandra Nelson's earlier blog posts.

Editor’s Note: Cassandra Nelson joined Mercy Corps in Afghanistan in 2002. She spends most of her time deployed in hotspots and hostile areas in need of humanitarian assistance. She has worked in Iraq, Darfur, Lebanon, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Liberia, North Korea, Sri Lanka, Banda Aceh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

A picture taken Sunday by a Save the Children photographer of a Palestinian family taking refuge in a local school.

Editor’s Note: Osama Damo is deputy Gaza program manager with Save the Children. He and his wife have been displaced twice since the conflict began; their apartment has suffered damage in the fighting. Currently they are living in a three-bedroom apartment in Gaza City with 15 other members of their extended family, including four children ages 7, 3, 18 months and 10 months.

Osama Damo
Save the Children

We are so afraid.

Saturday was the worst night. Ground troops and fighting came within yards of where we are staying. All of us spent a harrowing night in the corridor, the only protection we could find.

The children screamed for four hours straight.

We are trying to decide whether or not we should spend another night here — but where else would we go? There is a lot of confusion. Wherever we go will be a nightmare. My wife’s parents have so many people already jammed into their house. They have no generator or water. We do not know what to do.

We are doing the best we can, we are surviving. But I miss home, with all the meaning of the word.

The powerlessness is terrible. The other day Zaina, who is 3, became completely distraught because she had forgotten her lollipop at home when she and her parents fled. She was inconsolable when we told her she could not go back to get it. We could not comfort her.

A former colleague was killed Thursday in his house. His wife — who does not have any other family members in Gaza — is injured and their baby is in intensive care. She is alone.

I never really understood the issues brought about by forced displacement. Now I know. Nothing in life is as valuable as home.

Click here for Osama Damo's earlier posts.

A Mercy Corp truck on its way to a checkpoint to cross the border to deliver food and other humanitarian supplies to Gaza residents.

Cassandra Nelson
Mercy Corps

Jerusalem

I arrived in Israel last week to work with Mercy Corps, an international aid organization, to assist the Gazans who are suffering from the conflict and more than 18 months of harsh blockades that have left their cupboards bare and their banks empty of cash.

The entire Gaza strip is on the verge of collapse: most people have no electricity, no running water and inadequate food supplies. Fuel is running low. And only a fraction of aid needed to sustain Gaza's 1.5 million residents is getting in.

Getting basic food and medical aid into Gaza Strip from Israel has proved to be extremely difficult. This is frustrating for people who work with aid agencies trying to help civilians stranded in a war zone.

The Israeli authorities have refused to allow almost all expatriate aid workers to enter Gaza since November 2008, so we work in Israel, and our national staff who live in Gaza work inside the territory to carry out the projects on the ground.

The Israeli authorities have isolated Gaza from the rest of the world – no people, money or goods can legally enter Gaza from Israel without the approval of the Israeli authorities. In 2007, an average of 500 trucks a day entered Gaza with food and supplies, according to Mercy Corps data. In comparison, one day last week, just 36 humanitarian trucks were allowed access to Gaza. With almost the entire population of 1.5 million Gazans dependent on humanitarian assistance, it is obvious that the incoming aid is not even remotely adequate.

We have spent nearly 14 days working through red tape and protocols that seem to change daily, to secure the permission to deliver food aid. We have a truck filled with rice, cooking oil, canned tuna fish and edible dates that will feed 2,000 people for about a week. Last Wednesday, the delivery was supposed go through, but at 2:00 a.m. we received notice from the Israeli authorities that the delivery was being postponed because it contained edible dates as part of the package. The dates had been on the packing list for days and were never questioned – not until 2:00 a.m. the morning we were supposed to go to the border. This is just one delay of many that we have been confronted with by the Israeli authorities. There are days when we seriously wonder if our aid will ever get in.

Later that night we removed the dates and the truck was repacked. Once again, we were given permission to go to the border to deliver the supplies.

I will soon go to the Kerem Shalom border checkpoint with the truck for another delivery. Fingers crossed.

Editor’s Note: Cassandra Nelson joined Mercy Corps in Afghanistan in 2002. She spends most of her time deployed in hotspots and hostile areas in need of humanitarian assistance. She has worked in Iraq, Darfur, Lebanon, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Liberia, North Korea, Sri Lanka, Banda Aceh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

Dave Schechter
CNN Senior National Editor

Any attempt to answer the question "why is this happening?" - this effort included - will be found wanting by supporters of both Israel and the Palestinians, who will decry omissions of history, over-simplification, lack of sufficient context and invalidation of truths they hold to be self-evident.

Nonetheless, for those not steeped in the minutiae of the conflict, a guide for the perplexed.

There are no good dates left on the calendar.

That's been my line for years about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

By now every square on the calendar can be checked off as the date when one side committed what the other considers to be an atrocity.

(For purposes of this piece, we'll use a definition of atrocity from the dictionary on my desk: "An act of vicious cruelty, esp. the killing of unarmed people.")
 
There is no black-and-white, only shades of gray.

That is my other line about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

The hard-core on both sides, of course, see matters in absolute terms.

When viewed as a zero-sum game, in which what one gains is offset by what another loses, compromise is difficult, if not impossible.
 
 
 
The first thing to keep in mind is that there are two narratives at play, narratives that began thousands of years ago.

It's as if an Israeli vehicle collided with a Palestinian vehicle but the drivers steadfastly maintain radically different versions of what happened, of who did what to whom.

And there often is little respect for the viewpoint of the other.

The storyteller Noa Baum, who performs a piece she calls "A Land Twice Promised," in which she intertwines the stories of Israeli and Palestinian women, puts it this way on her website: "I believe that at the heart of this conflict are two parallel narratives of two national movements struggling to gain sovereignty over the same piece of land. This conflict is characterized by endless layers of memories of pain, injustice and victimization. At the same time there is a lack of listening and no willingness to legitimize the narrative of the other side. I believe that acknowledgement of the other's story is the first step toward creating dialogue and relationship building, which is the foundation for healing and peace – the only alternative to the spiraling vortex of violence."
 
 
 
Right now we are in that "spiraling vortex of violence."

Why is this happening?

History can be a guide, but history is in the eye of the beholder.
 
 
 
How far back do you want to go?

In the Bible, Abraham's wife Sarah was barren and he fathered a son, Ishmael, by Hagar, who was Sarah's handmaiden (and depending on the interpretation, a gift from an Egyptian Pharaoh).

Fourteen years later, the story goes, Sarah became pregnant and bore Abraham another son, Isaac.

The book of Genesis tells believers that God commanded Abraham to expel Hagar and Ishmael, but promised to make a great nation of their people.

Isaac's people became the Jews; Ishmael's the Arabs and Muslims.
 
 
 
Too far back?

At the end of the 1800s, European Jews fleeing persecution began arriving in the land of Zion (ergo, Zionists) seeking to establish a Jewish homeland in "Eretz Israel," the land of Israel, the soil of their ancestors.

A people without a land for a land without people.

Except, of course, that wasn't the case.

While there had remained a relatively small Jewish presence in the land called Palestine, the newcomers returned "home" and found there a much larger number of Ishmael's descendants with a claim to the same soil.
 
 
 
Still too far back?

In 1947, as the British sought to extricate themselves from the land they took in war from the Ottoman Turks, the fledgling United Nations offered the original two-state solution.

At the time the population in the affected area was roughly two-thirds Arab, one-third Jewish.

The Jews were unhappy with their allotment (a majority of the land but much of it in the Negev Desert) but accepted the proposal.

Arab leaders unhappy with their portion rejected both the partition plan and the idea of an eventual Jewish nation in Palestine.

In 1948, Israel declared its independence, followed almost immediately by war with the Arab nations, in which Israel captured far more land than had been allotted in the U.N. plan.

What the Jews celebrate, the Palestinians call the "nakba," or catastrophe.

In the months leading up to the war, several hundred thousand Arabs fled their homes, beginning the refugee issue that persists today.

Debate continues over the degree to which they were forced out by the Jews or encouraged by their own leaders to leave, expecting to return when the Jews were defeated.

In the months and years following the war, several hundred thousand Jews left their homes in Arab nations, the majority settling in Israel.

 
 
Not recent enough?

In the 1967 "Six-Day War," Israel conquered the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza strip, the West Bank (as in the West Bank of the Jordan River), the eastern half of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

(For purposes of this piece, we'll call the Gaza Strip "Gaza," as distinct from Gaza City.)

Egypt had controlled the Gaza since 1948.

Now it became Israel's headache.

In a relatively small strip of land along the Mediterranean Sea (25 miles long and 4-7 miles wide, slightly more than twice the size of Washington, D.C.) was a rapidly growing Arab population (then approximately 280,000, now an estimated 1.5 million people), living in what politely could be referred to as squalor.

Gaza, as densely crowded a piece of real estate as you will find on this planet, has been a boiling cauldron.
 
 
 
That squalor is the enduring memory of my first visit to Gaza more than 20 years ago.

Sewage running down gutters in alleys and streets.

People crammed into makeshift housing that became permanent over time.

A hospital operating without air conditioning in stifling heat and without window screens to keep out flies.

One prominent family living in palatial surroundings less than a stone's throw from abject poverty.

My favorite metaphor for Gaza was the rusting freighter then stuck and decaying some 100 yards off the coast of the Al-Shati refugee camp.
 
 
 
Over the years, the leaders of Arab and Muslim nations have used protests about the plight of the Palestinians as a convenient way to let their populace blow off steam over unrelated domestic issues.

The Palestinians have reason to feel used, if not betrayed, by some of their brethren.

Expressions of this sentiment have been heard in recent days from a frustrated population in Gaza and echoed by Hezbollah's leadership in Lebanon and the authors of opinion pieces in the Arab press.

Iran, which is Islamic but not Arab, supports both Hamas and Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Islamic political and military organization that fought a 2006 war with Israel.

Israel's vaunted military may not be trying to compensate for its perceived "loss" in Lebanon but in Gaza surely has implemented solutions to the harsh lessons learned fighting Hezbollah.

It's that influence of Iran through Hamas and Hezbollah that makes the rulers of numerous Arab nations nervous about Islamic movements gaining an even greater foothold than they already have in their own countries.

The global affairs think tank Stratfor summarized this point: "With somewhat limited options to contain Iranian expansion in the region, the Arab states ironically are looking to Israel to ensure that Hamas remains boxed in. So, while on the surface it may seem that the entire Arab world is convulsing with anger at Israel's offensive against Hamas, a closer look reveals that the view from the Arab palace is quite different from the view on the Arab street."
 
 
 
And now we reach the year 2009.

Three years after forcing religious-based settlers to leave Gaza, Israel maintains tight control of the crossing points on land, the seas offshore and the skies above.

Israel is at war against Hamas, a Sunni Muslim organization created more than 20 years ago; its name an acronym for the Arabic words "Harakat Al-Muqawama Al-Islamia" meaning Islamic Resistance Movement.

Hamas is a political party and provides social services in Gaza.

It also has a military component.

Israel and the United States are among those who consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization.

Hamas has taken credit (a more boastful stance than a mere claim of responsibility) for suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Israelis.

Hamas also has fired several thousand rockets and mortars into Southern Israel during the past several years.

The rockets are crude by modern military standards, though Israel says that Iran has given Hamas rockets with longer range and greater accuracy.
 
 
 
An Israeli blockade on relief supplies failed to pressure Hamas into halting rocket attacks.

But it did give Palestinians the chance to link Israel's tactics to the Holocaust by calling the blockade "the siege of the Gaza ghetto," a barely veiled reference to the Nazi siege of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw.

Israel and Hamas each say the other's actions precipitated the collapse a couple of weeks ago of a temporary truce brokered by Egypt.

After declaring the "tadiyeh" no longer in effect, Hamas stepped up rocket attacks that had tapered off during those six months.

Israel decided that it no longer could tolerate 1.5 million of its citizens living in fear.

Israel struck first from the air and then on land.

Palestinians accuse Israel of "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing."

Israelis are offended by the linguistic linkage to the Holocaust and point to language such as this from Hamas' 1988 convenant: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."
 

  
Israel contends that while its military tries to limit civilian casualties, Hamas fires rockets from residential neighborhoods and the grounds of schools and other institutions, using the local population as "human flak jackets," Chemi Shalev wrote in the newspaper Israel Hayom.

Did Hamas underestimate Israel's willingness to hit and hit hard or count on that response?

From an Israeli perspective, Hamas is willing to suffer mass casualties among the Palestinians if it mobilizes world opinion against Israel.

Speaking in Damascus, Hamas official Moussa abu Marzouk told a reporter from New American Media that "When Israel uses these means, it doesn't decrease support for Hamas. It accomplishes the opposite. The popularity of Hamas has increased sharply among the Palestinian people and people throughout the Muslim world."

From a Palestinian perspective, the scope of Israel's air and ground assault and the mounting toll of dead and wounded in Gaza is a disproportionate response to the firing of rockets and mortars that have killed and injured a relatively small number of Israelis.

In the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharanoth, Gilad Sharon offered no sympathy: "There are those who say that we are striking at civilians and a population in Gaza that is not to blame," he wrote, adding , "This is self-righteousness; we did not elect Hamas, the public in Gaza did, in droves.If they are suffering, they should elect someone better next time".

Writing in the Arab News, Osama al Sharif lamented: "Israel's killing machine could not be reined in, and as diplomacy stumbled, or was intentionally aborted, anger and calls for action swept through world capitals. The show of solidarity with the Palestinians, and in particular with the people of Gaza, was universal in spite of a brittle resolve of governments, especially members of the Security Council."
 
 
 
The past, the present and now, the future.

Barack Obama will be sworn in as the U.S. president on January 20.

Playing the "one President at a time" card, President-elect Obama has held his tongue thus far, but promises to have much to say once in office.

Despite reiterating his support for Israel (a contentious issue during the campaign) there is wariness in Israel about how the new President Obama will handle the intractable problem that has bedeviled his predecessors.

If only in the interest of getting off on a positive foot, might Israel consider concluding its current Gaza campaign before the Oval Office changes hands?
 
 
 
President George Bush has been an outspoken friend of Israel, supportive of the Palestinian National Authority and critical throughout of Hamas.

Many Israelis and Palestinians alike were disappointed by the level of U.S. activity (or inactivity, if you choose) in American efforts to resolve the conflict during most of his eight-year administration.

Having watched the failure of President Bill Clinton's heated Camp David diplomacy, the White House initially allowed that pot to simmer on a back burner.

Toward the end of his administration, President Bush spoke perhaps too optimistically about Israel and the Palestinians concluding an agreement before he left office.

"I was the first American President to call for a Palestinian state, and building support for the two-state solution has been one of the highest priorities of my Presidency. To earn the trust of Israeli leaders, we made it clear that no Palestinian state would be born of terror," he said in a speech delivered in December.

Looking the future, President Bush predicted, "The day will come when people from Cairo and Riyadh to Baghdad and Beirut to Damascus and Tehran live in free and independent societies, bound together by ties of diplomacy, tourism, and trade."

"The day will come when al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas are marginalized and then wither away, as Muslims across the region realize the emptiness of the terrorists' vision and the injustice of their cause," he said.
 
 
 
President Obama will be an interested spectator when Israel goes to the polls on February 10 to elect a new Knesset, its parliament.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu head the slates of the three parties expected to gain the most seats, though whichever party garners the most seats likely will have to form a coalition government that includes smaller parties.

With the Israeli military at war neither Livni nor Barak (the Israeli Prime Minister at those failed Camp David negotiations) wants to appear soft when most segments of the Israeli public back the campaign against Hamas and an election battle looms with the decidedly hawkish Netanyahu.

Meanwhile, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas could call for elections this spring that would pit his more secular Fatah movement against the Islamist Hamas.

It was Hamas' stunning (to the United States, if not also Israel) victory in the 2006 elections that led to the current situation in which Abbas and Fatah control the West Bank while Hamas rules in Gaza.

The U.S. and Israel would like Abbas and Fatah to extend their governance to include Gaza, but there is no money to be made betting on that outcome.
 
 
 
Just as the Jews achieved their dream of a national homeland, the Palestinians yearn for a nationality to call their own.

But the past (how far back do you want to do?) years have embittered Israelis toward Palestinians and Palestinians toward Israelis.

Generations have been born and grown up and grown old knowing no other reality.

Until that cycle ends, there won't be many "good" dates on the calendar.

Osama Damo, deputy Gaza program manager for Save the Children

Editor’s Note: Osama Damo is deputy Gaza program manager for Save the Children. He and his wife have been displaced twice since the conflict began; their apartment has suffered damage in the fighting. Currently they are living in a three-bedroom apartment in Gaza City with their two children and 13 other members of their extended family, including four children ages 7, 3, 18-months and 10-months-old.

Osama Damo
Save the Children, Gaza

Tuesday we had artillery tank fire in the area. It was one of our worst days. You can’t describe the noise, the fear inside of you. And the children are screaming.

You don’t know what to do. Do you stay? Do you try to leave and find somewhere safe? Is there any safe place? Can you protect everyone? Anyone? Everyone has a different idea about what to do — some grabbing belongings and preparing to run, others yelling that we have to remain.

Your mind stops working. But in the end, we are paralyzed.

The whole situation in the house is deteriorating. We cannot sleep at night — bombs shake the building. The children are upset all day long, and their mothers are doing what they can to comfort them. When there is an explosion, they say, "Don’t worry. It’s just a birthday bomb. People are celebrating."

We have run out of drinking water but are fairly certain that we can get more from aid organizations that deliver water to local shelters whenever possible.

Under normal circumstances, water trucks move through the streets and sell water to local residents. Nearly 80 percent of all tap water isn't safe - according to World Health Organization (WHO) standards. And right now, one-third of the Gaza population has no access to water and is reliant on humanitarian aid deliveries.

We are in a very lucky home. In other places, the story is darker, much darker. Others are sitting in the dark, frightened, with nothing to eat or drink, and in harm’s way with no one to help. At least we still have food. Our family is safe. When one of the children became ill, we were able to find a doctor and get medicine. And my wife and I both work for international organizations that are doing what they can to take care of us.

We are the lucky ones.

CNN's Octavia Nasr reports on how Arab media is covering the conflict in Gaza. Graphic images, viewer discretion advised.

At least three rockets fired from Lebanon struck near the city of Nahariya. CNN's Christiane Amanpour reports.