"Bombing to Make the Gaza Prison Even More Secure for Israel" Jonathan Cook

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According to the latest reports, the ceasefire would require, as before, that Hamas prevent all rocket fire out of the Strip, but it would also introduce what officials are vaguely terming a "mechanism" on the only border with Gaza not under Israel's control.

During its lengthy blockade, Israel has been able to prevent goods, including food, medicines and fuel, from entering the Gaza Strip through crossing points on its two land borders while its navy patrols the sea coast. But Gaza also shares a short southern land border, next to the town of Rafah, with Egypt.

Before the 2005 disengagement, Israel sought to control this fourth border too by bulldozing swathes of Palestinian homes to create a no-man's land between Rafah and Egypt. This area, overlooked by military watchtowers, was referred to as the Philadelphi corridor.

After the withdrawal, Israel hoped the steel wall along the Rafah border and its oversight of the crossing point into Egypt would ensure that nothing went in or out without its approval.

However, a small private industry of tunneling under the wall quickly burgeoned, becoming a lifeline for ordinary Gazans and a route for smuggling in weapons for Hamas.

Egypt had little choice but to turn a blind eye, despite being profoundly uncomfortable with an Islamic party ruling next door. It faces its own domestic pressures over the humanitarian catastrophe that has been visibly created in Gaza.

Israel believes the current invasion will have achieved nothing unless this time it regains absolute control of the Rafah border, undercutting Hamas's claims to be running the Strip. The "mechanism" therefore requires that technical responsibility is lifted from Egyptian shoulders.

According to the Israeli plan, it will pass to the Americans, whose expertise will be called on to stop the tunneling and prevent Hamas from rebuilding its arsenal after the invasion comes to an end.

Israel may additionally seek the involvement of international forces to diffuse the censure the Arab publics are likely to direct at Egypt as a result.

Once Hamas has no hope of rearming and cannot take any credit for the Gazans' welfare, Israel will presumably allow in sufficient supplies of humanitarian aid to pacify western governments concerned about the images of Gaza's cold and hungry children.

Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian analyst, believes that in this scenario Israel would probably insist that such supplies come only through the Egyptian crossing, thereby "fulfilling another strategic aim: that of making Gaza Egypt's responsibility."

And once the Gazan albatross is lifted from Israel's neck, Abbas and his West Bank regime will be more isolated than ever. Undoubtedly, the hope in Israel is that, with Gaza disposed of, the pressure will grow on the Palestinian Authority to concede in a "peace" deal yet more Palestinian land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.