IDF takes aim at Gaza while the Strip self-destructs and blood flows

How can cooler heads possibly prevail when the blood-soaked region is on the verge of all-out war?

According to a UN envoy the entire Middle East is set to flare into pitched combat on at least four fronts and get engulfed in war. All the usual suspects, alas. Already in Gaza, the bodycount increases daily, even though analysts say that fighting has yet to peak. The BBC reports today that Hamas are countering an assassination attempt against Prime Minister Ismail Haniya with an assault on Fatah bases. They may try a power grab, fears the weak Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas; so far 19 Gazans have been killed in the past 24 hours. Gunbattles inside Gaza's hospital wards, where rival factions executed the wounded, are a new low point. Elsewhere in the brutalized Gaza Strip, militants have resorted to hurling handcuffed prisoners to their deaths from high rise buildings. Lately, the internecine bloodletting tends to lull as soon as militants rocket Israeli towns in the Negev and provoke a military response from the IDF. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has pledged that airstrikes will continue until the Qassam rocket barrages stop and infiltrators are thwarted. Outrage over a report that Palestinian militants posed as journalists and attempted an attack on Israelis at a checkpoint by using a white jeep labelled with "TV" markings has been met with cynicism. Senior correspondents point out that journalists never are waived through without credentials being scrutinized; it is just as likely that the shot-up jeep was taped up as a TV vehicle after the fact in order to make the point that journos should lie low. Meanwhile, Gaza implodes.
Nasty.