If Israel is using the excuse of crude rockets from Gaza to slaughter thousands of Palestinians...

[oberliner]

42. And thanks for yours

It's clear we have some areas of agreement and some areas of disagreement.

I think your claim that "not using more military precision in their effort to destroy tunnels and rocket launchers leaves Israel's motives open to interpretation" is a reasonable one. The Israeli-side would counter by saying that Hamas is deliberately firing from areas where it knows return-fire would lead to civilian casualties. My own view is that Israel should not fire into areas where there are civilians even if Hamas attacks came from those areas. However I do not think that Israel's motives is to kill said civilians just to kill them. I think they feel it is an unavoidable consequence of the way Hamas fights them (which is why their "human shield" argument). That being said, they should not (in my view) fire at Hamas targets if they know there could be civilians (especially children) killed in the process.

I disagree with you on the "land grab" comment as I do not think there is any evidence to suggest that is the case with respect to Gaza. That is land that Israel really does not want anything to do with, as evidenced by the fact that they pulled out all settlements, troops, and infrastructure almost a decade ago. The "land grab" argument holds more weight with respect to the West Bank which is a different situation altogether.