Sunny Hundal has wrote earlier this week about the potentially alienating effects of religious voices in the current protests over Gaza.

In some respects, I would agree with him. To regard the Middle East conflict in simplistic religious terms ? for example as part of a wider war on Islam ? fails to recognise the complexities of Palestinian and Israeli societies and does little to build a broader political coalition. The use of the Middle East conflict to pursue an antisemitic agenda by some Muslims is also morally bankrupt and has done more harm than good to the Palestinian cause.

But if we are to see the development of a stronger political movement for an end to the siege of Gaza and the creation of a viable and free Palestinian state, religious groups and ideas have a key role to play. Groups such as the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel have already played an important part in monitoring human rights violations in the occupied territories, and others including Islamic Relief and Christian Aid are still trying to maintain some kind of relief effort in Gaza. Of particular symbolic importance are groups on the religious Jewish left such as Tikkun and Rabbis for Human Rights whose criticisms and direct action against Israeli policies demonstrate that criticism of Israeli policies are not intrinsically antisemitic, but can reflect a deeper commitment to social justice within the Jewish tradition.

The success of political liberation movements against apartheid in South Africa and for civil rights in the United States owed a great deal both to the ideological critiques and the grassroots resources of religious organisations. The movement for a just peace in the Middle East is no different. If we are to see a broader public coalition emerge in support of peaceful Palestinian aspirations for a free and viable state, then wider religious networks will need to be mobilised. For example, the Greenbelt Christian Arts Festival played an important role in popularising support for the drop the debt campaign long before it broke into wider public awareness with the Live8 concerts. If Greenbelt's long-standing concerns with Palestinians' sufferings coalesce into a more explicit campaigning position, this could mark a significant moment for the wider protest movement in the UK. Similarly organisations like Christian Aid, Cafod, and the Muslim Council of Britain can play a major role in educating their constituencies about the Middle East conflict and contributing to a disciplined and focused political campaign.

One casualty of such religious mobilisation might be the fragile interfaith contacts that the government and NGOs have sought to build up in recent years. Attempts to repair Muslim-Jewish relations which have become particularly tense on several British university campuses have generally been unable to address the underlying divisions caused by the Middle East conflict. Divisions now seem set to get worse. The Chief Rabbi and the Board of Deputies of British Jews have previously been very sensitive to criticisms of Israel from other religious groups. But when the editor of the Jewish Chronicle suggests that one of the most constructive responses to the Gazan crisis is to send take-away pizzas to those serving on the front-line with the IDF, it is impossible to defend the moral vacuity of the unquestioning support for Israel shown by some sections of the Jewish community. We can only hope that the worst elements of the Middle East conflict are not imported further into divisions in British society. But perhaps we should also not mourn the loss of an illusory social cohesion based on ignoring the plight of malnourished children in Gaza.

Like Sunny, I was at last Saturday's demonstration in Trafalgar Square. One of the most striking moments for me was seeing a small number of Muslim men kneeling in prayer in the middle of the road whilst the police and bemused demonstrators looked on. There was something profoundly dignified about that moment that was more eloquent than many of the speakers on the stage. That moment of prayer seemed to me to express a sense of frailty, longing for a peace that seems barely achievable and a connection to a source of hope deeper than the current conflict. Perhaps all of us, religious or secular, need that kind of prayer right now.

The posting of atheist advertising on Barcelona's buses has been branded "an attack on all religions".

Next week, Barcelona will become the first city in predominantly Catholic Spain to copy the controversial UK campaign when its buses use a direct translation of the slogan adopted in Britain by the scientist Richard Dawkins and other prominent atheists.

"Probablemente Dios no existe. Deja de preocuparte y goza de la vida," it reads. "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy life."

Madrid, Valencia and other cities are being targeted to run similar campaigns.

Campaigners say that with 20% of Spaniards professing they do not believe in God, it is time atheism becomes a visible phenomenon.

"It is time for non-believers to make themselves seen and display their pride in their own convictions," said the Catalan Atheists group.

The campaign has provoked a reaction from the Catholic archbishopric of Barcelona. "Faith in God is not a source of worry, nor is it an obstacle for enjoying life," it said in a statement.

"It is an attack on all religions," said Javier Maria Perez-Roldan of the church's Tomas Moro centre, blaming the socialist government for the privately funded campaign. "The government has created an atmosphere of belligerence."

The go-ahead for campaigns in other Spanish cities may depend on the political colour of the city halls that own, or co-own, the municipal buses.

Conservative officials in Madrid and Valencia are coming under pressure from Catholic lobbyists to prevent the advertisements circulating around their streets.

The spread of the Spanish campaign will also depend on how much funding atheist groups can raise.

Donations have been flooding into the fund opened by the Catalan Atheists. "We raised a thousand euros in the first day," the group said. "At this rate we will be able to take the campaign to Madrid as well."

Negotiations to get the advertisements on to Madrid's buses are reportedly set to start today.

The atheist campaign comes as Spain's Catholic church becomes increasingly involved in political campaigning.

It has fought against laws passed by prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's socialist government allowing gay marriage, simplifying divorce and reducing the importance of religious instruction in the school timetable. It is campaigning against changes to Spain's abortion laws.

Although church and state are nominally separate in Spain, the Catholic church receives funding from the government.

Three of China's best-known internet companies apologised today for any damage they had caused to society by failing to purge "vulgar" content from the web.

Their apologies followed the announcement of a government crackdown on lewd content, which targeted companies including Google and Baidu, the search engine that dominates the Chinese internet.

On Monday, the head of the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre named 19 websites that he said were not doing enough to prevent pornographic and vulgar material from reaching Chinese users.

"We feel deeply guilty," Baidu said in a statement posted on its site today. "We apologise to internet users for any negative effects given to society."

Netease, China's second-biggest online games operator, and the popular portal Sina also issued public apologies.

"As to our problems and any harm they could possibly have caused internet users, Sina feels deeply sad and concerned," it said in a statement.

Google's China office promised to work with web users to build a healthier online culture. "After we received notice from relevant government departments ... [we] cleaned up links to vulgar content that could have adverse effects on internet users," it said.

Pornography is banned and censorship widespread in China, but the country's more than 250 million internet users have little problem accessing sexual content.

Officials had waged campaigns against obscene materials before, but had not targeted such big firms. Analysts have suggested the drive may be linked to wider efforts to rein back discussion on the internet, particularly as the country enters a year with many sensitive anniversaries.

The state news agency Xinhua reported yesterday that Sohu, another portal named and shamed by officials, had urged users to boycott obscene content.

Chen Luming, the company's vice-president, said it hoped portals would no longer be scapegoats for troublemakers who intentionally upload such material.

Under China's criminal law, the distribution of obscene content for non-commercial purposes carries a jail term of up to two years. Xinhua said the law regarding "vulgar" materials was not as clear because the definition of vulgarity was vague.

Cai Mingzhao, the deputy director of the State Council Information Office, said this week that "vulgar" content included information advocating bloodshed, violence, murder, slander and libel, and explicit or erotic sexual images, publications, animations, comics and videos.

Unemployed temporary workers forced to spend the new year at a Tokyo soup kitchen have found themselves at the centre of a political storm after a senior politician questioned their work ethic.

As Japan greeted the Year of the Ox amid mounting pessimism over the state of its economy, more than 500 recently sacked workers queued up in a central Tokyo park for free food and shelter, and advice on how to survive recession in the world's second biggest economy.

The jobless who have spent most of the past week in Hibiya Park, a stone's throw from Japan's parliament, are among tens of thousands of temporary workers who were laid off at the end of last year.

More than 85,000 temporary and part-time workers are set to lose their jobs by the end of March, far higher than the 55,000 estimated earlier in the year.

But Tetsushi Sakamoto, a senior Liberal Democratic party MP, sparked anger when he suggested that the park's new residents were workshy.

"I wonder if they are really serious about working," he said, before comparing them to radical student activists in the late 1960s. Sakamoto later apologised for the remark but has came under mounting pressure to resign.

"The remarks were so insulting that a retraction is not enough," said Yukio Hatoyama, secretary general of the opposition Democratic party. "He should be dismissed immediately."

A network of unions and community groups opened the soup kitchen on the new year to provide emergency help to the ranks of the new destitute ? mainly men under 50 who once worked for subcontractors that make and supply parts for major Japanese exporters.

Earlier this week the residents were moved to vacant schools and government buildings, where they will be allowed to stay until 12 January. Around the country, about 3,700 people spent the holidays in temporary accommodation, many of them men who had been laid off from temporary jobs.

The country's car industry is in the midst of laying off more than 6,000 contract workers, including 3,000 of them at Toyota, which today announced more temporary factory closures in over the next three months.

Sony, meanwhile, is to cut 8,000 temporary jobs worldwide by the end of March 2010 and a report today said Sanyo was considering cutting 1,000 workers in the coming months.

Temporary workers were a rarity in the Japanese manufacturing industry until former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi's free market reforms in 2004 enabled firms to use non-regular labour in their factories. Now, about one in three Japanese workers are on part-time or temporary contracts.

According to the health and welfare ministry, the number of temporary workers reached 3.8 million last year, almost 20% more than in 2007. The number rose by more than 90% in the manufacturing sector alone.

In better days, the arrangement suited employers keen to cut personnel costs, and gave workers the freedom to move between jobs. But, as the recent flurry of layoffs proves, it also made temporary workers very expendable.

In response, MPs are debating a proposal to restrict the use of so-called "dispatch workers" in manufacturing. "I hope the discussions will lead towards a ban on day labour dispatch," Yoichi Masuzoe, the labour minister, told reporters.

Volunteers at Hibiya Park said they had been overwhelmed by the number of people seeking help after the global financial crisis forced Japanese companies to slash workforces.

"We didn't expect so many people to turn up," said Satoshi Tokairin, a camp organiser. "We knew there would be a big problem over the new year and asked the government to act quickly. But they didn't listen."

Toru Hayashi is typical of the thousands who were turfed out of their company lodging as soon as they became unemployed.

"I have no job, no money and nowhere to live," said Hayashi, who lost his job with an office furniture supplier early last month. "The sub-prime crisis has hit real-estate and we got only half the orders we had the previous year."

The 45-year-old, who has spent the past few weeks sleeping in a 24-hour internet cafe, makes no attempt to hide his contempt for prime minister Taro Aso's response to the economic crisis.

"The government talks a lot but does nothing," he said. "Aso is hopeless. We are having to depend on the generosity of ordinary people to make it through the bad times."

What is the dispute about?

Prices and politics. Ukraine, with its economy crippled, says it cannot afford to pay the $450 per 1,000 cubic metres of gas demanded by Gazprom. Russia claims it is only asking for $250 per 1,000 cubic metres, compared with $195 in 2008.

Ukraine says it is willing to pay $210 ? compared with $450-$500 prevailing in western Europe. Gazprom alleges that Naftogaz, Ukraine's state energy firm, still owes it $600m for 2008; the Ukrainians dispute this.

What's the background?

Since Ukraine's Orange Revolution in 2004, the country has moved closer to the west, seeking membership of Nato and, ultimately, the European Union. Under Vladimir Putin, the former president who is now prime minister, Russia is penalising a former member of the USSR and Warsaw Pact for removing itself from its sphere of influence. It rewards more "loyal" ex-Soviet countries with cheaper prices. The dispute is also compounded by a full-scale political crisis inside Ukraine with President Viktor Yushchenko at war with his former ally and prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko.

Which countries are affected?

Gazprom has now stopped gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine, accusing Kiev of shutting down all four pipelines and siphoning off gas for itself.

The impact has been felt most acutely in Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Turkey. It has now spread to France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Poland, Hungary and the Czech republic. Britain, which imports only 3% of its gas from Russia compared with the EU's 25% average, is unaffected.

Are people beginning to freeze?

With sub-zero temperatures continuing throughout mainland Europe, tens of thousands of people, mainly in eastern Europe, have no heating in their homes.

Countries are urging citizens to switch to alternative fuels and trying to import gas and other fuels via other routes. Ukraine, which has ample gas in storage or enough until the spring, is turning to fuel oil as well.

Western European homes remain largely unaffected so far as storage is enough for up top 90 days' supply.

Are there alternative routes?

Yes. Gazprom, which shipped 300-350m cubic metres a day to Europe via Ukraine, claims it is now providing 150m cubic metres via the Yamal pipeline to Europe and about 50m cubic metres via the Blue Stream pipeline to Turkey. Other planned routes to avoid both Russia and Ukraine remain a pipedream.

Any hope of a settlement?

Oleh Dubina, Naftogaz chairman, is due in Moscow tomorrow for talks with Alexei Miller, Gazprom's chief executive, and his team. But experts say Ukraine has less to lose than Gazprom, which is losing millions of dollars in revenue and already needs substantially more investment to improve its own network of crumbling pipes and reserves.

What is the EU doing?

Brussels is calling for a swift settlement of what it continues to claim is a purely commercial dispute. But it holds little political leverage as individual countries have concluded their own national deals with Russia, which they view as a strategically important partner ? despite European commission warnings that it may no longer be reliable or predictable. The 27 members may agree on Friday to share supplies held in storage among themselves if the Moscow talks collapse.

David Gow

Israel's military planners have prepared for two more stages of conflict in Gaza that would escalate an already heavy air and ground offensive into a full military occupation of the strip and the toppling of the Hamas movement.

Although Israeli officials reportedly believe they have already secured some achievements in the 12-day war, and despite the mounting toll of civilian casualties, there is still a strong appetite among some to step up the conflict to a much more deadly level.

The prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and his security cabinet were meeting today with army chiefs to discuss the plan.

The first stage of the conflict began with a week-long aerial and artillery bombardment of Gaza, before the second stage late on Saturday night when thousands of Israeli troops marched into Gaza with tanks and armoured vehicles.

The troops have faced heavy fighting, particularly in the north, and are now based on the outskirts of Gaza's urban areas, including Gaza City, which is effectively surrounded.

The cabinet may decide to consider the ceasefire proposals being discussed internationally, or it may continue the operation at this level. There is no suggestion yet that Israel is prepared to meet the demands of Hamas, notably the lifting of the economic blockade on Gaza.

But there is also a proposal to begin stage three, which would be to order the troops to fight their way into the heart of the urban areas, bringing with it much higher casualties on both sides. "The plan is to enter the urban centres," one Israeli source told Reuters.

A fourth stage would involve another major call-up of thousands of soldiers and then a full military occupation of Gaza and the toppling of Hamas, the Islamist movement that won Palestinian elections three years ago and now controls Gaza. One Israeli report said that fourth stage could last several months, even up to a year.

Israeli army officers have been quoted as saying that they have used enormous firepower in Gaza since the ground offensive began in order to protect their troops.

"For us being cautious means being aggressive," one unnamed officer told the Ha'aretz newspaper. "It will take many years in order to restore this area to what it was before. When we suspect that a Palestinian fighter is hiding in a house, we shoot it with a missile and then with two tank shells, and then a bulldozer hits the wall. It causes damage but it prevents loss of life among soldiers."

Some in the Israeli cabinet favour continuing the fight until Hamas is toppled, among them the deputy prime minister, Haim Ramon, and Eli Yishai, another deputy prime minister. Yishai said his goal was "to flatten Gaza so that they don't mess with us any more". "I hope that this operation reaches its conclusion with great achievements and with the crushing of terrorism and Hamas," he said.

Moshe Arens, a former defence minister and MP with the rightwing Likud party, also argues in favour of ordering the Israel defence force (IDF) to continue the fighting. "The IDF will lose if it does not win, and Hamas will emerge as the victor," he wrote in Ha'aretz.

He said a ceasefire now might allow Hamas to rearm in future, in the same way Israel fears Hezbollah has rearmed since the war in Lebanon two years ago. "The IDF must continue to pursue the mission it has been assigned and put an end to the firing of rockets from the Gaza Strip."

Others, including Ehud Barak, the defence minister, apparently favour a ceasefire now. Barak was in favour of a French proposal in the first week of fighting to call a temporary ceasefire and he has reportedly spoken in private against continuing the ground operations.

The concern for Israeli officials is that Hamas might continue to fire rockets into southern Israel, that it might rearm, or that it might simply gain by surviving the Israeli offensive. "Hamas, of course, will claim victory by merely surviving," wrote the editor of the Jerusalem Post, David Horovitz. "And in this confrontation, rhetoric and perception are anything but marginal."

Gazprom, the state-owned Russian gas group, today cut off all supplies to Europe travelling through Ukrainian pipelines, intensifying the political and economic crisis that has arisen out of a payments dispute between the two countries.

Amid evidence that people in eastern Europe are being deprived of heating as the Arctic cold snap continues, Russia and Ukraine continued to blame each other for the deadlock.

Gazprom accused Ukraine of shutting down the fourth and last open pipeline crossing the country while officials at Naftogaz, Ukraine's state energy firm, simply said: "Words fail us."

The complete shutdown comes ahead of top-level talks in Moscow tomorrow between Gazprom and Naftogaz executives to resolve a pricing dispute that has arisen in each of the last four years. Ukraine, semi-bankrupt and being bailed out by the IMF and EU, is being offered natural gas at higher prices, but substantially below those charged on European markets.

The dispute, viewed by the EU as a purely commercial one until recently, threatens a fresh breakdown in relations between Brussels and Moscow, with European Commission officials warning that Russia's reputation as a reliable partner is once again at stake.

But analysts point out that, since the last serious crisis broke out in 2006, Europe has done very little to avert shortages. Instead of creating an integrated market, drawing on alternative energy supplies, countries have simply drawn up individual contracts with Gazprom, increasing dependence on Russia.

Russia supplies a quarter of Europe's gas and 80% of this transits through Ukraine. As shortages hit western Europe and intensify in the south and east, EU governments will meet on Friday to consider sharing supplies held in storage.

Barack Obama has asked the CNN medical correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta to join his fledgling administration as the US surgeon general, according to reports.

According to washingtonpost.com, the 39-year-old doctor is "the Obama team's first choice" to become America's most senior public health official.

Although Gupta has not commented on the matter, the Post claims that he wants the job and is undergoing final vetting. CNN has confirmed Gupta has been approached by the president-elect's transition team.

Gupta combines his TV reporting with practising neurosurgery and his duties as a professor at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. He is reported to have had a two-hour meeting with Obama last November.

The Post reported that he later met the former senator Tom Daschle, who is the president-elect's nominee for the post of health and human services secretary.

In the 1990s, Gupta served as a White House fellow, where he was a special adviser to Hillary Clinton, writing speeches and helping her devise policy.

His journalistic assignments have taken him from Iraq, where he was embedded with a navy medical unit, to Sri Lanka as it struggled to recover from the 2004 tsunami.

The University of Michigan graduate reported from New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 2003, he was named one of the "sexiest men alive" by People magazine.

The surgeon general leads the 6,000-member commissioned corps of the US Public Health Service and is the top federal government spokesman on matters of public health.

Surgeons general in the past have used the office to urge Americans to give up smoking, to fight AIDS and to tackle other high-profile healthcare issues.

In 1964, the surgeon general Dr Luther Terry issued a landmark report on dangers of smoking. Three decades later, Dr Joycelyn Elders, the first black surgeon general, was fired by then-president Bill Clinton for publicly raising the possibility of teaching masturbation skills to children to keep them from having sex.

In my first article marking the 60th anniversary of the genocide convention, I argued that it is states that commit genocide, but only individuals who can be punished by the convention. The convention is therefore capable of punishing perpetrators after the act, but incapable of preventing genocide when it is taking place. To prevent future genocides, we need to rethink the status of the nation state as the inalienable building block of international organisations and law. If it is states that commit this crime, then we need a system of international law that defines the norms of behaviour that need to be followed for a regime to continue being recognised as the representative of a nation state.

This would entail a new definition of the sovereignty of states based on the principle that there is a threshold of violence committed by a regime against its own people which, when crossed, triggers the reclassification of the perpetrating state as a "genocidal regime". The genocidal regime is that which sets out to destroy the whole of a group within its own polity who are defined by who they are rather than what they do. These genocidal regimes would then forfeit their right to legal status in international law, would no longer be judged competent parties to bilateral agreements and treaties and would lose membership rights in all international organisations. Their embassies and consulates would no longer be protected. Their diplomats would lose the right to immunity. All their overseas assets would be frozen. If this did not force a change of policy, then sanctions would need to be accompanied by changes to the conditions under which the UN can authorise intervention. The UN should have the same obligation to come to the aid of citizens who are the victims of genocide as they do to come to the aid of states invaded by other states. This will be achieved by amendments to the existing text of chapter VII of the UN charter. In short, if a regime controlling a state declares war on its own people, then it should no longer be recognised as a legitimate international actor.

These reforms would form part of a general move towards a fourth generation of rights ? victims' rights. This new way of thinking about rights places the responsibility to protect the individual victim from gross violations of human rights at its heart. These victims' rights would not place the nation state at the conceptual centre of their definition. These rights would not require the acquiescence of perpetrators when being upheld. Citizens are the source of sovereignty. Therefore the way in which regime A treats its own citizens should be the measure of the extent to which other states recognise the right of regime A to be defined as legitimate. If the regime launches a war on its own people then those people, who are sovereign, need to be defended from the regime that is attacking them. It is not an assault on the concept of the sovereignty of nation states to ensure that these perpetrators know that their actions will have swift consequences, as swift as if they had crossed the border of another nation. It is a rejection of the notion that a regime governing a state at any one time should enjoy impunity in how it treats its own people. It is the necessary next stage in the evolution of human rights away from a defence of nation states and towards a defence of human beings.

There are many powerful arguments to be made against this proposal and in defence of the sovereignty of the nation state. Many argue that the nation state is the best guarantee of citizens' protections and rights. Even if the case against nation states could be proven and the security council and general assembly persuaded to adopt the plan (highly unlikely given the security council's makeup), critics will ask "Who is going to define a genocidal state?" The danger is that this becomes a charter for intervening in states that powerful nations do not like. All change produces unintended consequences.

If these reforms were passed there is also a danger that minority groups would attack governments in the hope of provoking a disproportionate response that can then be used to claim status as victims of genocide ? the current policy of Hamas in the West Bank replicated around the world.
There is much validity in these questions but after the Anfal in Iraq, acts of genocide in the former Yugoslavia, and full-scale genocidal projects in Rwanda and Darfur, few can argue that the current system works. We need a radical change in the way we think about international relations. As Mary Kaldor has argued we need to think of problems in human terms. This is a necessary step in moving from the progressive ideals of RTP and the millennium development goals, towards the protection of individuals in the most dangerous situation human beings create. Such a change can be dismissed as idealism as against the realism of the status quo. But we should be clear that the status quo is that we accept mass murder as the price of protecting our current definition of sovereignty.

With international public opinion increasingly impatient to see the fighting in Gaza end, diplomatic efforts to achieve a ceasefire are finally getting under way. Israel has so far resisted calls for an immediate end to its military campaign, but European representatives who are currently visiting the region to push for a speedy cessation of hostilities have reportedly been told that "Israel would like to see a diplomatic agreement bring the military operation in the Gaza Strip to an end ? so long as the deal excludes Hamas".

Israel's determination to sideline Hamas was also strongly emphasised by the foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, during a press conference on Monday, where she argued that Israel's campaign against Hamas was "a necessary war on terror" that could not end with an agreement, because such an agreement would hamper efforts to achieve peace; Livni also insisted that "Hamas must not be given legitimisation through an exit agreement from the situation in Gaza."

Reflecting Livni's statements, news reports have claimed that Israel intends "to drive out Hamas"; similarly, the analyst Martin Kramer has suggested that the aim of the military campaign against Hamas "is not only to stop the rockets from falling in southern Israel, but to move a long stride forward toward a change of regime in Gaza".

In Kramer's view, it is particularly Labour and Kadima that regard Hamas rule in Gaza "as a bone in the throat of the 'peace process' ? one Israel is determined to remove". He points to the rarely acknowledged dilemma that, even before the current escalation, giving in to Hamas's demands would have been perceived as a reward for violent "resistance" and would therefore have served to cement Hamas's grip on power and deepen the split between Gaza and the West Bank.

Kramer believes that this view is shared by many western and Arab governments that would like to see Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority back in control of Gaza, not least because overcoming the split between Gaza and the West Bank would restore some credibility to the peace process. A number of news reports indicate that a gradual restoration of PA control over Gaza is indeed a goal that is pursued quite openly: Egypt has already declared that it is prepared to open its border with Gaza only if PA forces will control the crossing, as stipulated in a multilateral agreement of 2005 that Hamas has so far refused to accept ? even though that would have obviously eased the often decried "blockade" of Gaza

The ceasefire agreement that Israel envisages also requires the PA to reclaim a role in Gaza: the three-part plan includes a ceasefire that would involve the US and possibly also France as well as the so-called moderate Arab countries and the PA; an agreement on measures to prevent smuggling from Egypt to Gaza; and, echoing the Egyptian demands, an agreement on re-opening the Rafah crossing based on the 2005 multilateral agreement with the PA, Egypt and the European Union.

Kramer argues in his analysis that "Hamas would swallow the pill in the name of national unity," but he also points out that measures like giving the PA exclusive control of reconstruction budgets in Gaza would be needed to ensure that Hamas would have to concede a broader role to the PA.

The crucial question of how the Palestinian public would react to such measures is hard to answer. Many commentators seem to believe that Israel's military campaign against Hamas has greatly strengthened the popularity of the group; however, the Palestinian negotiator Diana Buttu, quoted in a recent Guardian report, offers a more nuanced view: "People in Gaza are under assault right now so they're going to support Hamas. But when the dust settles I think we'll get a very different perspective, a lot of questioning about whether Hamas has the right strategy."

I for one certainly hope that Ms Buttu's assessment will turn out to be correct ? perhaps then Israel and the Palestinians would be spared yet more violence and bloodshed.