Ultimate responsibility for violent deaths in the conflict is rooted in the ongoing war of obliteration against the Jewish state and attacks on its civilian population, argues Seán Gannon.
The recent killing of 19 Palestinians in Beit Hanoun by an errant Israeli shell was a tragedy of terrible proportions. However, the Jerusalem government's expressions of regret and the Israel Defence Forces' acknowledgment of "failures" cannot be allowed to obscure the fact that ultimate responsibility for the deaths lies with the Palestinian terrorist gangs who have, since 2001, used the town to stage indiscriminate attacks against Israel, 350 in the last year alone.
The fact that the people of Beit Hanoun have long protested the turning of their children into human shields makes the deaths all the more poignant. In 2003, for example, civic leaders published statements and 600 residents marched through the streets in an effort to halt Qassam rocket fire.
Some, like 15-year-old Hassan al-Za'nin, paid for such protests with their lives. He was shot dead by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in July 2004 for objecting to their use of his family's land as a launch-pad.
The situation has only worsened since Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. According to a recent Human Rights Watch report, 1,700 mortar shells and rockets have rained down on Israel's southern coast and the western Negev since August 2005. Furthermore, arms are being smuggled in from Egypt at an unprecedented rate.
Meanwhile, the digging of tunnels under the Gaza border fence to facilitate ambushes inside Israel, such as the one last June in which Gilad Shalit was kidnapped, continues at a feverish pace - the IDF recently uncovered 15 tunnels in six days - and ongoing attacks have closed the Karni and Rafah crossings one day in every three.
One then wonders whether the Palestinian delegate-general to Ireland, Hikmat Ajjuri, was being entirely serious when he wrote in these pages: "what excuse is there for the non-stop Israeli incursions into Gaza?"
The carnage in Sderot notwithstanding, it is true that relatively few Israelis have so far been killed by Qassams, but only sheer good fortune has prevented mass casualties as last summer's near misses at the town's Yeshiva Tehnit and Hanativ Hayeshivati schools demonstrated. However, with advances in Qassam technology bringing Ashkelon's 115,000 residents within range of the rockets last July, Israel can no longer rely on its luck.
But Dr Ajjuri's enthusiasm for Israel-bashing is obviously not chilled by such trifles. Operation Autumn Clouds against the Beit Hanoun terror base was, he insists, not a legitimate and proportionate defensive action, but an unjustifiable act of "state terrorism," supporting his unsubstantiated allegations about the use and effects of Dime weapons. Fictitious claims regarding weaponry are, however, par for the Palestinian course. Accusations concerning the use of poison gas periodically surface, as do allegations that Israel intentionally spreads diseases such as BSE, HIV and bird flu.
The delegate-general's contention that "territorial expansionism" drives these and other Israeli "crimes" is difficult to square with the facts. Jerusalem has spent 13 years attempting to negotiate a withdrawal from the bulk of the disputed lands and would have done so by now if the Oslo process had not been cynically scuppered by Ramallah's attempt to bolster its bargaining position with explosive belts and bullets.
Today, government-sponsored Palestinian terrorism is the sole reason Israel is back in Gaza while Mr Olmert's West Bank "realignment" plan was under threat from the Qassams well before Hizbullah launched last summer's Lebanon war.
Seán Gannonis chaiman of Irish Friends of Israel