As Israel's government edges towards the ultimate injustice - a unilateral delineation of its national borders and a concomitant, permanent expropriation of Palestinian land - its statements grow ever more shrill. It is as if it believes that by noisy remonstrance, exaggerated rhetoric and threats of ever greater violence, it can somehow conceal or disguise the intrinsic injustice of its adopted policy and the immorality of its daily actions.
Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, turned up the volume again on Monday evening, sending barbed words crashing like unguided artillery shells into the grim, broken barrios of Gaza. The capture of the Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, and the Palestinian attack that preceded it were part and parcel of a "murderous, hateful, fanatical Islamic extremist desire to destroy that state of Israel," he said. In truth, the attack appears to have been belated, wrongheaded retaliation for the killing of nearly two dozen Palestinain civilians, including seven children, by Israel's army in the past four weeks.
Palestinian violence against Israelis, including rocket attacks launched from Gaza, is not and cannot be justified. It must cease - because it is wrong and because it hinders the realisation of Palestinian aspirations. But all the angry adjectives in the world cannot hide the fact that Mr Olmert also carries heavy responsibility for the latest mayhem, as well as the plight of Cpl Shalit.
It is his policy that keeps Gaza under siege and almost constant bombardment. It is he and his cabinet colleagues who, trying to out-Sharon Sharon, seek to persuade the US and other countries that there is no partner for peace on the Palestinian side, thereby justifying their self-made boundaries and walls, their shootings, missile strikes and incursions. And it is they who, by these same actions, weaken and undermine that unacknowledged partner, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, whose desire for negotiations, not more bloodshed, has been amply demonstrated by his decision to confront Hamas hardliners.
If Mr Olmert sets in train the large-scale, unconstrained invasion of Gaza that he now threatens, what does he think will be the result of this latest over-reaction? The story is depressingly familiar: many deaths, disproportionately on the Palestinian side, both military and civilian; more destruction, more traumatised children, more ruined schools and broken homes; thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of refugees pushing across the border into Egypt; and, in all likelihood, the death of the very soldier Mr Olmert wants to save.
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Guardian Unlimited Simon Tisdall is an assistant editor of the Guardian and a foreign affairs columnist. He was previously a foreign leader writer for the paper and has also served as its foreign editor and its US editor, based in Washington DC. He was the Observer’s foreign editor from 1996-98. 
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