News stories by Analysis by Jerrold Kessel, page 9

In his inauguration address Tuesday, U.S. President Barack Obama made no direct reference to Israel's three-week campaign in Gaza; nor did he mention the urgency of addressing the old bugbear of international relations - how successfully to forge a Palestinian-Israel peace.

Europe now evidently understands what the U.S. has long understood - if you want to move Israelis on peace, you need to make them feel secure.

'If only my three daughters will be the last victims of this horrible conflict,' wept Dr. Ezzadin Abu Al-Aish, a Palestinian gynaecologist recovering from his wounds in Tel Aviv's Tel Hashomer hospital. An Israeli tank shell killed three of his nine children aged 20, 15 and 14 as well as a 14-year-old niece in their home in the Jebaliya refugee camp Saturday. Israel says its forces were responding to sniper fire.

'The war isn't yet over, but it's the beginning of the final chapter,' said Eytan Ben-Eliyahu, former Israeli air force chief, on Israel Television Wednesday night. 'This is the crunch moment,' he added.

The war on Gaza is widening. Not so much on the battleground inside Gaza as inside Israeli society. The Israeli army continues the battering of Hamas, but on another front Israelis are firing on their own democracy -- and from within the very halls of democracy itself.

Into the third week of its war on Gaza, Israeli leaders are convinced they're still calling the shots. But, without a suitable diplomatic exit soon, the military 'successes' could quickly begin to unravel, some sobering Israeli voices have cautioned.

'Unlike the Qana tragedy in 1996 which brought about an immediate end to the Israeli offensive in southern Lebanon, Tuesday night's Israeli shelling of the Fakhura UNWRA school will not bring about an abrupt cessation of the Israeli military campaign,' says analyst Chemi Shalev in the Wednesday morning edition of Israel Today. 'But it will definitely accelerate the diplomatic pressure for a ceasefire.'

A confident Israel launched the second half of its war against Hamas in Gaza self-assured that it has already secured two central components of the war: the reaffirmation of its right to self-defence, and the legitimacy of its military action. The latter, Israel reckons, derives directly from the modesty, not necessarily of the scope of the operation (the most extensive against Palestinians in 40 years), but of its declared war goals.