I am not sure what Israel could do that would win it any friends (at least none that it does already have or wouldn’t otherwise have).

However, it’s current tilt into the sort of Reaganesque ‘peace through strength’ might offer it an improved chance of surviving in the face of all those people who aren’t its fiends, won’t ever be its friends and look forward to the opportunity do dance on the grave of the last Jew.

My first senior partner used to say:
If you can be liked, be liked. If you can’t be liked, act so that you should be respected. If you can’t be respected, make sure you are feared.

With a lot of the world, Israel is sort of stuck with going for the third option aboove.

This isn’t simply a Hamas “thing”. If Shalit is still alive (a very big “if”) then he’s being held by a group that has the support of (or is drawn from) Hamas, Fatah and the PRC, amongst others. Also, notice that Hezbollah has joined the action from Lebanon.

Abu Mazen (the so-called President) is yet another who would willingly see Israel destroyed, almost as much as he’d like to neutralize Hamas! Mazen and Mubarak have been playing a game of cheat and retreat these past few days. There was no (zero, zip, nada) likelihood that Hamas would order the release of the kidnapped soldier and Olmert has simply been played for a sucker.

Now that Olmert realises this, the task for the IDF will get that much harder - but the next phase will see a rooting out of the Hamas infrastructure in Gaza, with accompanying howls from Mazen (crocodile tears) and his hypocritical European and State Department buddies.

There is no peace partner for Israel (and never has been) for as long as the Arabs continue to espouse the destruction of Israel and the eradication of the Jews. The rest of the appeasement world is, however, quite content for the Jewish State to keep taking the hits as they think it means that the Islamists are kept away from them - and will be satisfied if they achieve their goals. A stupid policy, as 9/11 was able to illustrate.

With the election of Hamas, the Arabs openly declared war on Israel. The Kassam rockets and the attack on the IDF post (and kidnapping) were the first shots of this new war. No two-faced Intifadeh soft war (a la Arafat) for Hamas - this is a shooting war declared by a terrorist government who were gifted the entire Gaza in a false hope that, with the trappings of a state the people would start to behave more responsibly - and engage with their neighbours Israel. Instead, the mania of infidel-hatred was too strong.

Sounds like the Hamas leadership doesn’t want thier 72 virgins - it’s OK to send other to there deaths but as soon as they are a target they run scared.