BEIJING, Jan. 5 (Chinese media) -- "There was a war, and Israel flexed its massive military muscle, but also exposed Israel's fragility. We discovered that our military might ultimately cannot be the only guarantee of our existence," said Israeli author David Grossman in August 2006 while addressing a Yitzhak Rabin memorial assembly.
More than two years later, Grossman's worries became a stark reality again after Israel launched its biggest military offensive in four decades 10 days ago.
According to a U.N. agency, at least 524 Palestinians, one-fourth of them civilians, have been killed in Israel's airstrikes and ground operations in the Gaza Strip. More than 2,600 people were also injured.
"Civilians are being killed... shells are severing people's legs, shrapnel is going into people's bodies and into people's home, a lot of people are being cut down. Everyone is terrified," said a foreign Red Crescent doctor on Sunday.
However, the military campaign did not help Israel achieve its stated goal of ending rocket fire by Hamas into southern Israel. Hamas has said Gaza would become a "graveyard" for "the Zionists."
Since Israel's air campaign began on December 27, four Israelis have been killed by rockets and mortars fired into Israel. An Israeli soldier also died in fighting on Sunday.
The armed conflicts have triggered a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and drawn strong international condemnation.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was worried about the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
"We hope that the parties concerned could halt military operations and armed conflicts immediately," said Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi when speaking on the phone with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday.
Israel's military offensive has dimmed the hope for peace in the Middle East and made it harder to ferry aid to Palestinians in Gaza, said French President Nicolas Sarkozy before flying to Egypt for discussion about the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
History and bitter lessons from the past show that neither Israel nor Palestine could be the eventual winner in armed conflicts and neither side could ever succeed in getting rid of the other by means of war. Fighting violence with violence will inevitably slip into a vicious circle, leading to a spiral of retaliation, a growing hatred and endless sufferings.
Conflicts can only result in more casualties, the aggravation of humanitarian crises, and the dimming of hopes of security and peace. Only mutual trust and mutual and accommodation, rather than bloody conflicts, can lead to last peace and tranquility.
Putting an immediate end to the bloodshed and steering the Israeli-Palestinian relationship back onto the track of political negotiations are among international efforts to seek a lasting solution to the ongoing armed conflict.
As Grossman put it: "We all know what the solution must be. Why then is it so hard to achieve it? Assume that indeed there is only a very slight chance of peace, why not try to exploit that chance?"
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