This conflict could be handled nonviolently. I know Hamas is perpertrating violence on Israel, and the overwhelming force the Israeli's are using is not the answer. They could go for a nonviolent blockade and have the UN oversee the dimantling of the Hamas rockets. It would be difficult to set up, and it might not work, but right now, Hamas is the boy with a peashooter fighting Goliath.

What is the US gaining by blocking this cease fire? Or who is gaining what by it? But I would also like to know if there was any international condemnation against Hamas firing missiles into Israel in the first place. Also, considering Israel's history, Hamas should have known that Israel would react the way it's reacting now. So for political reasons, Hamas would see a portion of their population destroyed? This doesn't mean I condone Israel's actions. However, something is going on deep down and someone is gaining SOMETHING from this. I can't help thinking of Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine"

There are too many Americans making too much money selling American made weapons . It's an insanity we have enabled for far too long .

The only reason I can see in the U.S. blocking a cease-fire at the Gaza Strip is that a cease fire would be a good thing. The current administration cannot change its policies from evil to good at this point in its nefarious terms of office. It would ruin its reputation for unadulterated slime.

Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions director Jeff Halper, on the first boat lift breaking Israel's siege on Gaza, describes how Israel's "warehousing" of Palestinians reflects an on-going strategy of "nishul," Hebrew for displacement. Halper's "Matrix of Control" analysis reveals how Israel progressively "wipes Palestine off the map". Skeptical? Read Halper's "An Israeli in Palestine, Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel" and Ilan Pappe's "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine".Want to help? See the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (www.ijsn.net/), www.FreeGaza.org.

Amazing to see imperialism at work, in the 21st century, personified by the lackeys that "operate" in the UN, this forum for nothing. No one has said a word - and if anyone did it has not been aired in the UN or the "press" with its distorted or fabricated news, that for months on end Israel has blatantly cut the supplies of diesel fuel and gas (let us not talk about the flour and the sugar, to give other examples) forcing hospitals to close, water pumps not to work and causing the inevitable shortages of power, water, food, hospital care, and anything else the Israelis would hate to see happen again if the Warsaw Ghetto were resurrected. Not to mention the medicines and books and even musical instruments Israel has denied entrance into the Gaza Ghetto, all in the name of the "war on terror" that fooled Americans and non-Americans the world over, to the benefit of those who control the weapons and the oil which form the cornerstone of US democracy, so eloquently delivered from the bomb compartments of US (made) planes. To drive an entire population of Palestinians crazy, with no food, no water, no sewage, no hospitals, and only the light of candles as they sit in the dark waiting for the whistling bombs, and to expect Hamas or the Fatah or whoever will rise to fight against such a fascist way of 'herding' people into utter submission NOT TO fight back only fits the arrogant minds of the Israelis and their godfathers, the US Government. One amazing thing, however, is to see how flimsy the response of the Arab nations was; maybe the wonders of Dubai have blinded them into another kind of passiveness.

Is this the last attempt by the Bush administration to act unilaterally in an international crisis in which the United States has failed to broker peace? An earlier comment referred to Naomi Klein's Shock Doctine, and I follow that by suggesting that it is currently in this adminstration's best interest to help further escalate this violence and destabilize the UN process for negotiating peace. We are in our countdown to the next administration and I hope that better world minds can hold the peace so as not to trigger a countdown towards expanding the conflict in the region-- at least before Obama can begin working multi-laterally to help broker other options.

Obama is in for the shock of his life. Good luck, Wonder Man.

Yes, there is a problem in the middle east. but who, exactly, is to blame? The Palestinians elected Hamas on their own because of their stupidity, as we elected Bush for a second term, after the Supreme Court put him in offoce for the first chaotic term. We have had to watch our country dissolve during the last eight years, and now, the Palestianians can do the same. It is sad, but true. People just are not intelligent enough to govern themselves. Stupidity, greed, lust for money and power will rule, and we, the people will suffer, as we do not have the courage, or initiative to rise up and fight the crooked, evil system.