It's widely understood that this violence stems from the attack last week in the southern Israeli town of Eilat. As the Times puts it:  "The recent round of violence started a week ago, with a terrorist attack on southern Israel in which eight Israelis were killed."

The real question, though, is who committed these acts.  The Times says:

Israeli officials said the perpetrators and planners of the terrorist attack were originally from Gaza, and Israel has retaliated with strikes that have killed at least 23 Palestinians. Gazan officials say they know nothing about the source of the attack.

That's a massive understatement.

To date, no armed Palestinian groups have claimed responsibility for the Eilat attack. Israeli officials claimed the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) were behind it, but have offered no proof to back up these allegations.  And there has been almost no critical coverage of the weakness of the Israeli case.  On NPR (8/18/11), for example, listeners have heard Israeli ambassador Michael Oren claim that Palestinian militants carried out the attack, and five days later London Times reporter James Hider (8/23/11) stated the same thing as if it were a well-established fact.

A handful of journalists have been persistently pointing out that the weakness of this case. One of those writers, Yossi Gurvitz, explains in his latest piece at the Israeli website +972 (8/25/11) that Israeli media are beginning to raise serious questions:

Since Monday, there have been a few more reports in the Israeli media, casting more doubt on the official story. Yediot reported on Tuesday (Hebrew) that nameless people in the security apparatus doubt the PRC were responsible for the attacks, and raise an interesting question: If they were responsible, why was the PRC's entire leadership in the same place?

According to Yediot’s anonymous intelligence sources (bear in mind that such sources should always be viewed with skepticism; by their very nature they cannot be corroborated, and they tend to be unreliable even when speaking openly), the attribution of the attacks to the PRC stems from one somewhat incoherent comment on some Jihadi message board.

Ha'aretz reported on Tuesday (Hebrew) that at least three on the attackers were Egyptian Jihadis. American intelligence sources – the same caveat above applies here--told Globes (Hebrew) that they, too, doubt the PRC are responsible, though they may have had a small role in the attacks.

Two days ago, the IAF attacked the Gaza Strip again--naturally, it does not consider itself bound by the ceasefire; only the Palestinians are, and only them can be blamed for breaking it--and killed some Islamic Jihad apparatchick. Yesterday, the IDF claimed (Hebrew) that he was in charge of funding the Eilat attacks. Hold on a minute, I'm confused: I thought you said the attacks were carried out by the PRC, and now it’s the Islamic Jihad left holding the bag? As of yesterday, reported Amira Hass in Ha'aretz (Hebrew), there are no mourning tents in Gaza. As of today, one week after the attack, the IDF refrains from exposing the identity of the attackers it killed.

This is a remarkable story that deserves serious coverage. Two dozen people in Gaza have been killed in "retaliation" for an attack that very well could have originated somewhere else.

Despite recent moves by Israel to ease construction in the Gaza Strip, restrictions on building materials are hampering international humanitarian efforts while doing little to impede the Hamas-led government they are designed to weaken, aid and nongovernmental groups say.

The groups say that Israel is "snarling the delivery of materials to international relief organizations struggling to build much-needed housing, schools and infrastructure projects."  Zacharia goes on:

But even as Gaza's economy shows signs of improvement, its humanitarian needs remain widespread. Thousands of homes damaged in a punishing three-week war with Israel in 2008-2009 are yet to be rebuilt. Millions of liters of raw sewage are spilling into the Mediterranean Sea because treatment plants remain in disrepair. And experts say Gaza's rapidly growing population of 1.5 million could run out of fresh drinking water by 2015 if the infrastructure is not overhauled.

This account is an interesting contrast to a recent article (12/17/10)  by Ethan Bronner of the New York Times.  The headline alone would give some sign that the Times sees things differently: "Gaza Mends, but Israelis See Signs of Trouble." The primary concern would seem to be that Gaza is showing some signs of rebounding--which is apparently bad news for Israel:

Two years after the Israeli military swooped down here in a three-week war that destroyed thousands of buildings, killed about 1,300 people and largely deterred rocket fire, things are starting to shift again in Gaza. But they seem to be shifting backward, creating a sense of déjà vu. The economic siege is easing, and the border is heating up. Israel hoped that the blockade would break Hamas. Instead, Hamas is fully in charge, Israel is frustrated and another confrontation seems possible.

Israeli officials, readers are told, saw the humanitarian needs in Gaza, and responded accordingly:

Maj. Gen. Eitan Dangot, who runs civilian affairs in Gaza for the Israeli Defense Ministry, said that 78 civilian projects had been approved and that they included hospitals, schools and housing, although only half had been started. All those projects involve international groups that decline to work with Hamas.

And what of the humanitarian groups working in Gaza,  who see things very differently? They receive a passing mention:

Twenty-two human rights and aid organizations recently published a report saying that Israel had not yet carried out its obligations to change its policy and that life here remained unchanged.

The Post sees this as the news; the Times sees it more like a footnote to a story about how Israelis view the threat from the Gaza Strip.

Israel said its three-week offensive was intended to change the reality in the south. Since January, when the military campaign ended, the rocket fire has significantly fallen off and residents here are trying to accustom themselves to a kind of normalcy amid the lingering uncertainty and fear.

This recycles the myth that rocket fire was a constant barrage until the war changed all that-- a point Kershner makes more explicitly later:

According to the Israeli military, some 3,300 rockets and mortar shells were launched from Gaza at southern Israel in 2008, compared with fewer than 300 since the end of the war.

This is highly misleading; much of that rocket fire came at the end of the year-- after the invasion and bombing of Gaza was underway. In fact, a  negotiated peace prevailed for much of the middle of 2008--which is something that you would have learned if you were a careful reader of the New York Times. Right before the invasion, the paper (12/19/08) reported that much of 2008 was quiet:

Israeli and United Nations figures show that while more than 300 rockets were fired into Israel in May, 10 to 20 were fired in July, depending on who was counting and whether mortar rounds were included. In August, 10 to 30 were fired, and in September, 5 to 10.

Rocket fire increased significantly in November after Israel attacked a Hamas tunnel and killed six militants. For a graphic understanding of the rate of rocket/mortar fire, see this (which is based on Israeli figures).

The more natural lesson to draw is that negotiations work better than violence. This is apparently not what the New York Times wants you to believe,  though they did once report that reality. Perhaps it was an accident.

The term "even-handed" is the problem that Israel has with the conclusions in the report. Your criticism of Israel seems so much harsher than that of the Palestinians. Why is that?

CBS News (9/9/09), summarizing a report by Israel's leading human rights group:

Well over half of nearly 1,400 Palestinians killed in Israel's Gaza war were civilians, including 252 children younger than 16, a leading Israeli human rights groups said Wednesday, challenging Israel's claim that most of the dead were militants.... The Israeli rights group B'Tselem on Wednesday published figures it said were compiled in months of research, including visits to families of victims. It said 1,387 Gazans were killed, including 773 civilians and 330 combatants. Thirteen Israelis also died, including four civilians.

So why would the U.N. be more interested in the war crimes that killed nearly 200 times as many people? Thanks to Ifill and the NewsHour for challenging this strange moral reasoning.