Mark Steel: Now we've all seen through the Israeli government's excuses

The worrying part about whether the ceasefire in Gaza can hold together will be whether the international community can stop the flow of arms to the terrorists. Because Israel's getting their planes and tanks and missiles from somewhere and until this supply is cut off there's every chance it could start back up again.

But there are possible areas of compromise. For example, if the Israelis think the Hamas rockets are as lethal as they say, why don't they swap their F-16 bombers and Apache helicopters for a few of them? These things are capable of terrorising a whole nation for years apparently, yet the Israelis seem to have neglected to buy any, wasting their money on gunboats and stuff. Given that their annual arms budget is $7.2 billion plus $2.2 billion dollars in 'aid', they'd save enough to buy a selection of banks in every country in the world.

Related articles

• Gaza: 'I watched an Israeli soldier shoot dead my two little girls'
• Israel 'completes Gaza troop withdrawal'
• Dialogue with Hamas is only path to peace, urges novelist
• Fares Akram's Gaza blog
• Search the news archive for more stories

The military advantages would be enormous, because the Israelis' main complaint about Hamas is their use of tunnels to smuggle arms. But if Israel gave Hamas a few planes and tanks and helicopters, they could probably be persuaded to shut down those tunnels that seem to be the cause of such bad feeling.

Because whatever you say about Israel, at least it moves its weapons about legally, except for when it secretly built an arsenal of nuclear weapons against an array of international agreements, but they did it above ground and not in a tunnel and that's the main thing.

As you watch the reports from Gaza, another reason why the ceasefire may break down becomes apparent. The Israelis might claim their satellite pictures show the Palestinians are now in possession of huge mounds of rubble, that could be lethal if thrown over the border. Luckily they're easy to spot as most of them are next to women howling "Look what they've done to my house," but perhaps the air force should bomb these stashes of weapons just in case.

The Israelis say they fear Hamas will once again break the ceasefire by sending over those rockets. But the whole point of the operation was to make that impossible. Because they must have asked themselves the question 'If we slaughter 1,300 people including 300 children is that likely to make people a) less cross or b) more cross?' And presumably they concluded it will make them much less likely to grow up full of hatred and determination to retaliate. Perhaps they saw medical research that shows when someone is suffering from anxiety and bouts of irascible ill tempered behaviour, the best treatment is to pen them in with no food or medicine and then kill 1,000 people including 300 children and that calms them down a treat.

Another way they could allay their own worries about Hamas breaking the ceasefire is to read the report from their own government's Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre, which states that during the ceasefire "Hamas did not take part in any rocket fire and sometimes prevented other organisations from attacking." Still, with all that's been going on I suppose they haven't had time for reading.

Despite all this there might be one cheery sign, which is that never before have so many people seen through the Israeli government's excuses for handing out mass destruction. The demonstrations in support of Palestinians have been bigger than ever before, and even the United Nations and the Wall Street Journal have suggested Israel has committed war crimes. One poll in America suggested sixty per cent of the population opposed the bombardment, and the change of opinion reached the point that an Israeli diplomat has been quoted as saying "The harm to civilians in Gaza is causing us huge damage."

Maybe best of all was genetics expert Steven Rose, who was on Radio 4's Today programme to talk about a new study that's located 'morality spots', the part of the brain that deals with our morality. Asked how we could know whether this was true he said in a marvellously posh academic radio 4 voice "Well we could test the brains of the Israeli cabinet and see if they've got no morality spots whatsoever."

Perhaps the most immoral part of all is the perfect cynical timing, as if three weeks ago Bush shouted "Last orders please, any last bombing before time's up - come along now, haven't you got homes to demolish."

More from Mark Steel