Financial Times: The Israeli government will decide on Saturday whether to call off its three-week offensive... with a government spokesman saying on Friday night that 'it looks like we achieved what we wanted to achieve.'
Haaretz: The decision would mean Israel has put an end to the three-week-long Operation Cast Lead without an agreement with Hamas, relying instead on the support of the United States and Egypt.
Gideon Levy, Haaretz: War after war, doublespeak after doublespeak, words are on the front line. They don't shed blood, but they justify, validate, purify, polish and clean... our word-laundering is guaranteed.
Khaled Hroub, Open Democracy: 'The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people,' said Moshe Yaalon, the Israel Defence Forces chief-of-staff in 2002...
After three weeks of intense and round-the-clock attacks by air, land and sea, Israel is far from achieving either its immediate aim... or the larger 'psychological' aim enunciated by Yaalon. It has become apparent that the war itself will instead convince many more Palestinians that their ability again to withstand an assault by the fourth most powerful army in the world is a source of their power rather than their weakness.
Image: Reuters/Baz Ratner, Boston Globe
