LONDON — "Twenty-four hours a day of rolling news to fill," lamented the senior producer of an all-news radio station recently, "and only two hours of actual news to fill it." But his problem is minor compared to that of people condemned to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where there is now almost nothing new to report at all.
There are plenty of incidents, of course. More than two hundred rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip against nearby Israeli towns in one week recently. Some were a new, longer-range version that reached Ashkelon, a large town that had never been hit before. One Israeli died, and several were injured.
Israel retaliated with massive raids on the northern Gaza Strip by land and air. Two Israeli soldiers were killed, and about 120 Palestinians. Israel says 90 percent of the Palestinian casualties were fighters; Palestinian sources say half were civilians, including 22 children. Given the crowded living conditions of the Gaza Strip, the latter estimate is more plausible, although it would make no sense for Israeli forces to target civilians deliberately.