Rockets from Gaza have exhausted Israel's patience

TWO key Israeli figures, hardly knee-jerk hawks, have lost all patience with the Palestinian rockets falling on Israeli cities.

Consider the words of Israeli President Shimon Peres, respected and scorned as the enduring symbol of peace-seeking liberals:

"It is the first time in the history of Israel that we, the Israelis, cannot understand the motives or the purposes of the ones who are shooting at us. It is the most unreasonable war, done by the most unreasonable warriors."

Israel Defense Forces are massed along the border of the Gaza Strip, ready to plunge into territory the Israelis annexed in 1967, held for decades and then abandoned and uprooted settlements at great financial and political costs in Israel.

The current Israeli defense minister is Ehud Barak, a former general and prime minister who was on the cusp of signing a peace agreement in 2000 with the Palestinians, until the late Yasser Arafat lost his nerve.

Hamas, both a ruling political party and resistance movement, is the primary irritant to the festering wound that is Gaza.

Reviled by political rivals in the Palestinian parliament and despised by neighboring Egypt, Hamas is an open surrogate for Iran.

In response to the rockets, Israel imposed a harsh economic blockade, and Hamas still attacked rather than relent for the welfare of its own.

As the rest of the world has averted its eyes and been mute, Israel chose to act, and not as the bully.