Editorial: Israel is right to fight on in its defence but also to look at the ceasefire plan​

​Israel has responded in the right way to Hamas’s surprise acceptance of a ceasefire plan.

Israeli leaders are pressing ahead with military operations in Gaza, while considering the Egyptian-Qatari proposal to end the violence.

Israel had previously paused its plan to attack Rafah, which it sees as the last significant Hamas stronghold, to allow for negotiations over the release of Israeli hostages by Hamas.

The ceasefire talks appeared to have stalled, until Hamas yesterday announced that it had accepted the Egyptian-Qatari ceasefire proposal, although details – including how long it will last and what this means for hostages held in Gaza – remain unclear.

Meanwhile, Israel's army told thousands of people to evacuate eastern Rafah to what Israel has designated a humanitarian zone on the Mediterranean coast, while Israeli continued with strikes overnight.

Israel is a country that defends itself when under terrorist attack, and it is hard to think of a terror attack more serious than that which happened on October 7.

The scale of massacre of Jews that day was apparent by the evening, even though it took days for a rough death toll to emerge. Yet much of the western public reaction was one of indifference to that declaration of war, and has been instead one of support for Palestine, which typically means implied support for the barbarians of Hamas.

Highly unreliable death tolls out of Gaza have been treated as verified fact, even though the Gaza authorities are answerable to Hamas, an organisation that will murder civilians en masse, so is hardly going to have qualms about distorting statistics.

Perpetual war, however, is not a tenable strategy for anyone in the near future.

While Israel continues to defend itself, it is right also to examine the peace plan.