Gaza, already a sump of hopelessness, deprivation and subjection, is about to become a living hell. That will have lasting historical reverberations

The premeditated, evil barbarity unleashed on hundreds of innocent human beings by Hamas, a terrorist organisation, can never be justified or excused. Nor can the belief systems that conceived of the massacres and put them into effect. By any standard, they are heinous crimes against humanity and can only be viewed as such.

The question that arises now is one of response. What can and should be done in response? At the absolute minimum, it is not only legitimate but obligatory to firstly prevent any recurrence and then to seek out and bring to justice all the perpetrators – gunmen, weapons providers and political planners. Rescuing all the poor hostages from their captors is also an imperative.

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu – mortified by intelligence lapses – has promised a response that will “echo across the generations”. We should remember that anything that is done or not done now will have lasting historical reverberations. If any aspect of the history of Israel and Palestine is clear and beyond dispute, it is that the use of violence begets further violence and that killing Israelis and Palestinians drives peace further away and only endangers the lives of the great mass of innocent people.