There are few known quantities in the conflict but some things have become clear, says Jeremy Bowen.
One of the first things to understand about the reportage, analysis and commentary that has poured out since the Hamas attacks of 7 October is that no-one has the full story. Not only is it, as ever, hard to penetrate the fog of war to work out what is happening on the battlefield. The new shape of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has not yet emerged.
A lot of Israelis are echoing his sentiment that Palestinian civilian deaths are unfortunate, but they are being killed because of the actions of Hamas. Some of the Palestinian dead would have been part of Hamas. But even if that proportion is as high as 10%, which is unlikely, it means that Israel is on course to have killed as many Palestinian civilians in just over a month as Russia has killed in Ukraine since February 2022. .The UN human rights office has said that so many civilians have been killed and wounded in Israeli air strikes that it has serious concerns that the attacks are disproportionate and could be war crimes.
Unlike Israel's security and military chiefs, he has not accepted any personal responsibility for the catastrophic series of failures that left Israeli border communities virtually undefended on 7 October. The argument went that the Palestinians were no longer a threat to Israel. Instead, they were a problem to be managed. The tools available include sticks, carrots and the ancient tactic of "divide and rule".
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