IF YOU WANT PERPETUAL WAR, WAGE PERPETUAL WAR:

Now stop starving the Gazans (Yossi Alpher, January 15, 2009, IHT)

For the past year and a half, Israel, with the full backing and encouragement of the quartet of Middle East mediators (the European Union, the United States, the United Nations and Russia), as well as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and even the West Bank-based PLO, has maintained an economic blockade on the Gaza Strip.

Generally it has allowed into Gaza only the equivalent of the UN minimum number of calories required daily for subsistence, multiplied by the 1.5 million or so population of the Gaza Strip, along with minimal medical supplies and fuel.

This economic-warfare strategy against Gaza has failed totally; indeed, it has proven counterproductive. [...]

Over the past 42 years, Israel has periodically invoked collective economic punishment and incentives toward Palestinians on the theory that empty or full stomachs - impoverishment or development - would effectively alter Palestinian political behavior.

There is not a shred of evidence that this has worked.