By Jeremy Bowen - Middle East editor, BBC News - Nov. 10, 2006
The ingredients for another major crisis between Israel and the Palestinians have been piling up for most of this year.
What makes the current position so dangerous is that neither side has a coherent political strategy for dealing with the other.
That leaves a vacuum, which is being filled with violence.
Israel has been in a political tailspin since the conflict in Lebanon in the summer, full of recriminations about the war`s lessons and consequences.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert`s plan for dealing with the Palestinians has been utterly derailed.
Unilateral action
Mr Olmert was elected on a policy of moving Israeli settlers out of some parts of the occupied West Bank - without negotiations with the Palestinians - in the same way that Israeli settlers were pulled out of Gaza last year.
But the idea was dropped after the violent summer because of a feeling in Israel that unilateral pullbacks - from Lebanon in 2000 as well as Gaza - had proved bad for Israel`s security.
If Israel`s attacks - through raids in Gaza as well as by artillery - are not proportionate to the threat it faces, it will violate the laws of war
Mr Olmert has not found another big idea yet. Without a political strategy, Israel is relying on military power alone.
The summer`s war weakened Mr Olmert, and weak Israeli prime ministers find it easier to take punitive military action against the Palestinians than to talk to them.
Palestinians are under heavy pressure - from the barrels of Israeli guns, as well as from financial sanctions against the Hamas government.
Palestinian discord
Hamas continues to refuse to accept the demand made by Israel and the world`s big powers to recognise the Jewish state, accept previous agreements made with it by the Palestinians and to give up violence.
Hamas and its rivals Fatah have been at loggerheads since elections last January.
A unity government between the two seems to be the only way to deal with the impasse, but coalition negotiations have been tortuous.
With the political scene fragmented, and with law and order very fragile, some armed men from the two groups have been settling their differences with guns in the streets.
Israel has taken almost continuous military action against Palestinians in Gaza since it moved out its last settlers there in September 2005; first it said in response to the firing of homemade Palestinian rockets into Israel, and then after the capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinians in June this year.
It says it takes action to protect the Israeli people.
The rockets, called Qassams, have become a big political issue for Israelis because they make them feel vulnerable.
It is a violation of the laws of war to fire indiscriminate weapons like Qassams into civilian areas.
Israel`s military operations have not stopped the rockets, but they have pushed the economy of Gaza into a state of collapse.
According to the UN world food programme, 70% of the population there is now "food insecure."
Disproportionate attacks
Israeli attacks have done severe damage to Gaza`s infrastructure, which has not been repaired yet.
According to the campaign group Human Rights Watch, Israel has fired up to 15,000 artillery shells into Gaza since September 2005.
In the same period Palestinians have fired 1,700 homemade rockets into Israel.
So far this year, Palestinian rockets have killed two people in Israel, both of whom were Arabs.
Since June, Israel has killed around 300 Palestinians in Gaza. More than 60 of them were children.
If Israel`s attacks - through raids in Gaza as well as by artillery - are not proportionate to the threat it faces, it will violate the laws of war.
According to the UN`s human rights investigator in the Occupied Territories, John Dugard, Israel`s attacks amount to a brutal collective punishment of a people, not a government.
The crisis between the two sides is deepening - and more than ever in need of international diplomatic intervention.
But nothing credible is in sight.
