Bret Stephens, in the weekend’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required), analyzes the results of Operation “Cast Lead” in the wake of the recent Israeli ceasefire and troop withdrawal.  Israel, he says, has learned a great deal from these past three weeks–but so has Hamas.  And while Israel hopes for peace, it’s not clear that Hamas shares that feeling–and peace can’t come about in that environment.

An excerpt:

All wars eventually end. The question most Israelis are asking is whether this one has merely gone on vacation.

So why are the top echelons of Israel’s political and military establishment delighted by the war’s result? Long answer: They think that Israel has re-established a reputation for invincibility tarnished in the 2006 war with Hezbollah; that they bloodied and humiliated Hamas while taking few casualties; that they called overdue international attention to the tunnels Hamas uses to smuggle its arsenal; and, with the unilateral cease-fire, that they put the onus to end the violence squarely back on Hamas’s shoulders.

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As Operation “Cast Lead” has come to a close, charges have once again been raised that Israel used weapons containing depleted uranium.  The UN showed this charge to be baseless the last time it was raised, in 2006, but has been raised again under similarly dubious aims.  Below is an excerpt from the 2006 notice of the UN Environment Programme’s findings:

Reporting on the findings of a UNEP assessment carried out for three weeks in October, Achim Steiner said samples taken from 32 sites south and north of the Litani river found “no evidence of penetrators or metal made of DU or other radioactive material.”

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