In the wake of Israel's devastating and deadly 22-day Gaza Strip military offensive, is the West sending new signals that it might be willing to talk to Hamas?

In an intimate political profile of former UK PM Tony Blair in The Times of London, the Quartet's special Middle East envoy suggests that Hamas must be brought back into the political process. 

"My predisposition is that in a situation like this you talk to everybody," Blair says in the story.

Though it doesn't seem to be in the on-line interview, The Times of London quotes Blair as stating that the current Israel/US-led strategy of building up the West Bank as a counter-balance to the Hamas-led Gaza Strip "was never going to work and never will work."

Blair doesn't stray too far from the official line. He tells the Times that there should be no official or unofficial talks with Hamas until the Islamist militant group renounces its stated pledge to destroy Israel.

But Blair makes it clear that he thinks it is time for a different strategy.

The central question is whether Blair is floating a political trial balloon for the Quartet.

Of the many problems in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one of the most pressing ones to resolve is reuniting the West Bank and Gaza as a single Palestinian political entity.

That requires an agreement between PA President Mahoud Abbas, who doesn't accept Hamas rule of Gaza, and Hamas, which doesn't recognize Abbas as PA president since his term officially expired last month.

Abbas is heading to Cairo for hastily-arranged talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. That's been taken as a sign that there may be some progress on reaching a Fatah-Hamas deal.

One route might be a caretaker Hamas-Fatah unity government that agrees to new elections soon.

It's difficult to see Hamas giving up on its "destroy Israel" charter vow. But it might be possible for the US to take a page from its approach to Lebanon by accepting the unity government and talking only with those members that have embraced a two-state solution.

That's not an idea Israel is likely to embraced any time soon, especially if, as expected, Benjamin Netanyahu becomes the next prime minister.

And it could be that Blair's opaque comments are being given too much import.

Either way, it should be interesting to see how Blair's comments are received.

(Of course, one young Hamas hard-liner in Gaza quickly dismissed Blair's interview as "worthless and stupid.")

Graffiti in one Zeitoun home showing a figure standing next to an Israeli flag going to the bathroom on a Palestinian flag.

It has been nearly two weeks since Israel ended major military operations in Gaza and, only now, is a picture of what happened beginning to really emerge.

After being barred by Israel and Egypt from freely entering Gaza during the three-week military operation, reporters from around the world flooded Gaza in the past two weeks to begin putting the pieces together.

One of the most well-documented incidents took place in Zeitoun, a rural patch of land south of Gaza City where 29 members of one family were killed, Red Cross ambulances were repeatedly denied access and young children were found trapped in homes with the corpses of their parents.

NPR's Eric Westervelt reported in a eight-minute piece on Zeitoun that residents made 140 emergency calls for help during the first two days of the Israeli ground offensive. But Israeli soldiers prevented Red Cross medics from reaching the survivors until the fourth day of the operation.

Ashraf Khalil at the Los Angeles Times wrote a vivid story about one family whose unarmed father was killed when soldiers burst into the home. The survivors got an OK to walk to safety, but were taunted by Israeli soldiers as they left their homes and a one-year-old was shot as the relatives walked down the road.

Sheera Frenkel at The Times of London tracked down an Israeli soldier stationed in Zeitoun who said they were told: "Fire on anything that moves in Zeitoun."

The soldier said the instructions were clear: "Shoot first and ask questions later." 

Tim Butcher at The Daily Telegraph was among the first reporters to visit Zeitoun and documented some of the spiteful graffiti left by the Israeli soldiers: "Arabs need 2 die." "1 down, 999,999 to go." "Arabs are pieces of s--t."

What happened in Zeitoun does not appear to have been an aberration.

Tim Butcher was among the many to write about the searing impact of Israeli use of white phosphorus in civilian areas.  

Residents in Ezbt Abed Rabbo north of Gaza City reported that an Israeli soldier opened fire on a family waving white flags, killing two young girls. The incident is one of five involving white flags being investigated by human rights workers.

Tim McGirk at Time Magazine examined the economic impact of the Israeli offensive that hit Gaza's ice cream factory.

My McClatchy colleague, Shashank Bengali, wrote about the Israeli bombing of Gaza's elite American International School.

"The Israelis want to keep us poor and ignorant," said Amar Hamad, head of the Palestinian business association.

As might be expected, the reports coming out of Gaza have generated an intense reaction in Israel.

"Israel takes every report of war crimes seriously, provided it comes from a credible source," Israel's Foreign Ministry said in a prepared statement about the issue. "However, no official body or organization has presented any evidence of war crimes allegedly committed by Israel. All accusations have been based on rumor, half-truths, anonymous reports from unconfirmed sources, and manipulations of the truth."

But, faced with the still-growing number of concerning cases, the Obama administration is urging Israel to take a serious look at the allegations.

"We expect Israel to meet its international obligations to investigate," Susan Rice, the new US ambassador to the UN, said in her first speech to the UN Security Council.  

Orly Halpern at The Globe and Mail looked at the charged Israeli response to the stories coming out of Gaza.

"The worse it gets, the harder you have to defend it," Larry Derfner, a columnist for The Jerusalem Post told The Globe and Mail. "There's too much to admit, too much guilt to take on."   

This is what the cease-fire in Gaza looks like:

This startling video was filmed by Gaza militants who attacked an Israeli patrol on Tuesday, killing one Israeli officer and sparking an Israeli counter-strike early this morning on the smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.

President Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, is in the region trying to prevent the deadly violence from surging once again.

There are ongoing efforts to secure a long-term cease-fire before Israeli voters elect a new government on Feb. 10. But Israel and Hamas remain far apart on how long the truce should hold and what should be part of the deal.

Meanwhile, Gaza militants are openly challenging Israel's threat to strike Gaza with overpowering force in response to new attacks.

On Wednesday, Palestinian militants fired three volleys of mortars at southern Israel and, later in the evening, fired the first Qassam since Israel declared a unilateral cease fire 12 days ago.

"There is no cease fire," said Ahmed Yousef, a top Hamas political aide in Gaza now serving as deputy foreign minister of the Hamas-led Gaza Strip government.

Yousef said Hamas is looking to cement a truce before the Israeli election on Feb. 10. That vote could propel the hawkish Bibi Netanyahu back into the post of prime minister, a move that could make it harder for Hamas to secure concessions from Israel.

As of this writing, Israel had held its fire, perhaps in deference to Mitchell's meetings with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem.

But Gaza residents were bracing for another Israeli strike. Hamas police evacuated government buildings and cordoned off streets near police stations and compounds repeatedly bombed by Israeli air strikes during the 22-day campaign.

It's fair to say that the Artist-Formerly-Known-As-Cat-Stevens is not Israel's favorite musician.

The high-profile convert to Islam has twice been deported from Israel amid allegations, which Stevens denies, that he had knowingly given money to Hamas charities.

Last fall, it looked like some sort of detente taking shape when Stevens, who changed his name to Yusuf Islam, was invited to sing at a 10th anniversary celebration in Israel for the Shimon Peres Center for Peace.

But when word got out that Israel's president was hosting Stevens, the invite was unceremoniously withdrawn.

Now, in the aftermath of the deadly Israeli military campaign in Gaza that killed more than 1,200 Palestinians, destroyed an estimated 4,000 homes and caused upwards of $2 billion in damage, Stevens has decided to return to the region - in a way.

Stevens has recorded a special version of a George Harrison song to raise money for Palestinians hit-hard by the fighting.

The song, "The Day the World Gets 'Round," is now available for download.

"I hope this song will help remind people of the immense legacy of love, peace and happiness we can share when we get round to looking at mankind’s futile wars and prejudices, and start to change our foolish ways,” Stevens says on his Web site.

While Stevens is taking the compassionate approach to raising money for Gaza, Jordan's Queen Rania is making a different kind of appeal.

Queen Rania, who starred last fall in an amusing video homage to David Letterman with her own Top 10 list, has produced a more grim new video about Gaza called "Hell on Earth."

Contrary to popular belief, Barack Obama is not president of the United States; the election was actually won by John McCain.

While many people may think it is true, Gaza militants have never fired rockets at southern Israel.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are the same person.

These statements are demonstrably false.

So when the head of the Israeli Government Press Office tells The Jerusalem Post that there was no ban on journalists entering Gaza during the recent military operation, the appropriate response would be to laugh.

His statement, like the three above, is demonstrably false and was, perhaps. to be charitable, a droll attempt at humor.

One can argue about why there was a ban, but there is no denying that Israel barred journalists from entering Gaza during the war.

It is harder to disprove claims that 9/11 was a US government conspiracy than to demonstrate that Israel imposed a ban on journalists entering Gaza.

In fact, a simple Internet search would have helped The Jerusalem Post discover that, during the war, Danny Seaman himself defended the decision to bar journalists from Gaza, not once, but several times. 

"Any journalist who enters Gaza becomes a fig leaf and a front for the Hamas terror organization, and I see no reason why we should help that," Seaman told The New York Times.

For The Jerusalem Post to base a story around a demonstrably false claim is simply bad journalism. Unfortunately, we see it all-too-much from the paper.

Danny Seaman has every right to argue that reporters are Hamas sympathizers, though I'm not sure what he would make of the news organizations, like McClatchy, NPR and The New York Times, among others, actively looking into claims that Hamas has again been brutally cracking down on Fatah rivals.

Danny Seaman also can't be blamed for trying to belittle reporters now in Gaza as "spoiled crybabies" who are a "disgrace to the profession." If he thinks that's the best way to approach his job, that's the Israeli government's prerogative.

But if there was no ban on reporters entering Gaza, then Israel's high court spent a lot of time and energy debating an illusion.

The wisest legal scholars in Israel must be demented to have actually issued a ruling tossing out the non-existent ban.

And if, as Danny Seaman told The Jerusalem Post, Israel never arrested anyone for entering Gaza, that will come as welcome relief to Amira Hass, the Israeli journalist who was arrested for entering Gaza.

Danny Seaman argues that any reporters who were willing to put in "a little effort" could have gotten into Gaza.

But, so far as I can tell, the only way for reporters to get into Gaza for most of the war would have been to use one of the smuggler tunnels between Gaza and Egypt.

And, considering that Israel was repeatedly bombing the tunnels during the war, they probably were not the most reliable route into Gaza. (Though one can guess that Danny Seaman probably would not have shed many tears for Fig Leaf Reporters buried alive by Israeli bombers.)

Reporters were repeatedly prevented from entering Gaza through any of the Israeli land borders.

An Israeli Naval boat rammed one boat from Larnaca carrying reporters trying to get into Gaza. Then Israeli ships fired warning shots to prevent a second boat full of journalists from breaking the Israeli Naval blockade.

Egypt did not let any reporters into Gaza until the final days of the war. And that came only after journalists had jumped through a series of bureaucratic hoops in Cairo.

The Israeli military brought a few selected reporters into Gaza for a few hours to see things from their perspective.

It is true that no reporters tried to parachute into Gaza. Nor did any journalist I know explore the possibility of taking a hang glider into Gaza.

So far as I know, no TV star tried to swim or ride the surf into Gaza.

In this regard, the journalistic community of "spoiled crybabies" was indeed negligent.

Perhaps, with a little more effort, reporters could have catapulted into Gaza.

As noted here before, the most comprehensiveive coverage of Gaza came from Al Jazeera's English-language station. While international reporters were barred by Israel from freely entering Gaza during the fighting, Al Jazeera had its Gaza correspondents on-the-ground.

And Americans apparently took notice.

According to the Associated Press, Al Jazeera English saw a 600 percent jump in its on-line viewership, and 60 percent of that growth came from people watching in the United States.

The station is only available in three small cable stations in the US, so most people who want to watch it from America have to go on the Internet.

"Gaza ... was a breakthrough opportunity to make an impact with people who are less aware of Al Jazeera than we'd like," said Tony Burman, managing director of the English-language channel in Qatar.

Meanwhile... Israel's Supreme Court finally got around to ruling, one week after the major Israeli military strikes came to a halt, that Israel has to let journalists into Gaza unless there are "dire circumstances of concrete danger" that require the border to be closed.

The ruling came too late for journalists to cover the fighting itself. But Gaza is now saturated with reporters who are flooding the area to tell the stories.

And there are many, many stories. The full picture is just beginning to emerge, so stay tuned.

One of the unique features of entering Gaza from Egypt is that there is actually Hamas border control on the other side.

When people enter Gaza through the Israeli border crossing, you are stamped out of Israel, but there has never been (so long as I've been going, anyway) a Palestinian Authority border stamp when you entered Gaza.

Now, the Hamas-led government has its own Palestinian Authority entry stamp. (See above.)

As the Hamas border guards say: Welcome to Palestine.

It is Day Five of the cease fire, and the Israeli gunboats are booming off the Mediterranean coast.

It’s barely dawn and the Israeli warships off the Gaza Strip coast are opening fire on the small Palestinian fishing boats a few hundred yards off the shore. The Palestinians pulling in their meager hauls from the cloudy, sewage-saturated waters try to ignore the incoming fire that splashes in the waters around them.

 The Israeli ships enforcing a Naval blockage of Gaza have been firing on the fisherman every morning in an apparent attempt to keep them from getting too far from shore.

But this morning, Thursday, Jan. 22nd, the Israeli fire blasts through the morning all along the coastline. Then the Israeli fire gets closer to shore. By late morning, five Palestinians, including a little girl, have been wounded by the Israeli cease fire shelling.

This is post-war Gaza.

Whole neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. Dozens of mosque minarets precariously hang at awkward angles. Dirt tank berms have become new playgrounds for Gaza City kids.

It has become easier to give people directions to our Gaza City apartment: Drive down the road and turn off at the sewage-filled bomb crater. Palestinians wait in long lines at UN warehouses to fill up cooking gas canisters.

In Rafah, scores of Palestinians have already begun to dig out their smuggling tunnels along the Egyptian border.

Kids climb 90 feet down the covered tunnel entrances to fill up bags with dirt. Caterpillar bulldozers clear away dirt so smugglers can begin digging new entrances to replace the ones caved in by Israeli air strikes. Some say they will be back in business in a few weeks. Others say it will take a few days. A few are already up-and-running.

Mohammed Barhoum stands on fuel-soaked dirt as a generator helps siphon diesel through a tunnel from Egypt. A couple of his gas lines to Egypt were damaged by the air strikes. But he’s got two lines going, and a yellow Volvo fuel truck sits alongside his makeshift fuel depot as the smugglers smoke cigarettes and talk about their trade.

This eight-mile stretch along the border is Gaza’s lifeline. Israel’s ongoing and longstanding economic blockade of the Hamas-led Gaza Strip has fueled the smuggling business that was one of the major targets of the Israeli military campaign.

Israel pounded the busy border and crippled the tunnel network. No one can say for sure how many tunnels there are. Israeli estimates put it at 250 or 350. Smugglers here say it is upwards of 1,300. Both sides agree that the Israeli air strikes put the smugglers out of business. At least temporarily.

Tunnel engineers say the air strikes transformed the border into an unstable digging area. But that doesn’t seem to be deterring many smugglers who are getting back to work.

Most of the tunnels in plain sight along the border are used to smuggle in basic goods that Israel long ago stopped regularly letting into Gaza. Things like cookies and chips, milk and cement, fuel and toilet paper.

It’s not immediately apparent what has been done to the longer tunnels used by Hamas to smuggle in weapons. And it is even less clear what Hamas was actually able to smuggle into Gaza.

Despite persistent warnings from Israeli intelligence that Hamas had smuggled in advanced rockets and other weapons to bring down tanks and helicopters, there was virtually no sign of them during the fighting in Gaza. Gaza militants managed to fire a handful of advanced rockets that sailed deeper into southern Israel. But they packed little punch. And if Hamas militants had smuggled in better weapons to fight the Israeli army, they didn’t prove it on the battlefield.

Standing in a ravaged public park in Gaza City’s Tel Hawwa neighborhood, a masked Hamas militant boasts of the group’s triumphs.

While kids nearby play on tank berms and the surrounding buildings are scarred by tank fire, this Hamas militant commander says Israel fell right into its trap. He boasts of the great victories and contends that Hamas destroyed seven Israeli tanks and APCs in this neighborhood.

He claims that Israeli soldiers were so scared and confused by Hamas tactics that they haphazardly opened fire on civilians. He contends that Hamas didn’t fight in civilian areas or put Palestinians at risk, even though he admits that militants tried to lure Israeli forces into the urban neighborhoods in an attempt to ambush the forces.

He contends that Hamas lost only 48 fighters and argues that Israel lost far more soldiers than it is willing to admit. (Nine Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza, with at least five killed by friendly fire.)

The masked commander with his AK-47 strapped awkwardly across his generous pot belly hardly seems like a military strategist. He makes vacuous boats of triumph while surrounded by rubble. And the dirty penny loafers he wears don’t seem to match the camouflage pants and jacket he is wearing. It is somehow reminiscent of the Iraqi officials who claimed that US forces were not in Baghdad even as split screen images showed American tanks taking over the city’s airport in the closing days of the 2003 invasion.

“They did not achieve anything,” the Hamas commander says before heading off into the ruins of Gaza City.

It is likely to be remembered as one of the most emotionally-charged moments of the Gaza conflict: An anguished Gaza doctor appeals for help on a live Israeli TV news show after his house was hit by Israeli fire, killing three of his daughters and one niece.

The Israeli reporters scrambled to help and got the doctor's family flown to Israel for emergency treatment.

As the doctor made an impassioned plea for answers the next day, an Israeli mother angrily lashed out and, knowing little about his story, accused the doctor of hiding weapons in his home.

Our story on the tale is here.

You can watch the two events below:

Doctor appeals for help on live Israeli TV:

Israeli woman confronts doctor at hospital: