Maybe they should have included the West Bank in the cease fire....

It's hard to have a partial ceasefire as is being seen as reported in the UK Times. Hamas and Islamic Jihad had pressed for the West Bank to be included in the ceasefire, but Israel refused, they killed two men and then the predictable response:

An Islamic Jihad member, speaking from Gaza, confirmed that one of the militants killed by Israel in the West Bank was Tareq Abu Ghali, 24, a senior member of the group. “We had to retaliate for the righteous blood spilt by the [Israelis],” he said.

At least two rockets were fired into the Israeli border town of Sderot, injuring two people. “This is a blatant violation of the calm, and we will weigh options,” an aide quoted Mr Olmert as saying after the rockets struck.

Olmert's power is just about ended, so what could have been easily avoided by merely includling the West Bank in the ceasefire to actually create more than five days of peace has now been destroyed. In the never ending tit for tat of each one justifying the killing of another, the real victims end up being the innocent bystanders and those who face extreme living conditions due to the economic blockade Israel has punished the Gaza with.

For a bit of a different view on what happened, Jerusalem Post.

As an aside...it's interesting to see the amount of McCain ads in the JP...