Those options have long been in preparation, as the defense minister, Ehud Barak, admitted early on in the offensive. He said he and the army had been planning the attack for at least six months. In fact, indications are that the invasion’s blueprint was drawn up much earlier, probably 18 months ago.

It was then that Hamas foiled a coup plot by its chief rival, Fatah, backed by the United States. The flight of many Gazan members of Fatah to the West Bank convinced Barak that Israel’s lengthy blockade of the tiny enclave alone would not bring Hamas to heel.

Barak began expanding the blockade to include shortages of electricity and fuel. It was widely assumed that this was designed to pressure the civilian population of Gaza to rebel against Hamas. However, it may also have been a central plank of Barak’s military strategy: any general knows that it is easier to fight an army — or in this case a militia — that is tired, cold and hungry. More so if the fighters’ family and friends are starving too.

A few months later, Barak’s loyal deputy, Matan Vilnai, made his now infamous comment that, should the rocket fire continue, Gazans would face a “shoah” — the Hebrew word for holocaust.

The shoah remark was quickly disowned, but at the same time Barak and his team began proposing to the cabinet tactics that could be used in a military assault.

These aggressive measures were designed to “send Gaza decades into the past,” as the head of the army command in Gaza, Yoav Galant, described Israel’s attack on its opening day.

The plan, as the local media noted in March, required directing artillery fire and air strikes at civilian neighborhoods from which rockets were fired, despite being a violation of international law. Legal advisers, Barak noted, were seeking ways to avoid such prohibitions, presumably in the hope the international community would turn a blind eye.

Here’s my latest on the Australian Greens, its Gaza response and Palestine policy.

See A New Script for Dr Brown