The Israelis also continued to give absurd, indeed sinister, names to their operations. “First Rain” was succeeded by “Summer Rains,” the name given to the punitive operations that began in June 2006. “Summer Rains” brought a novel component: a land invasion into parts of the Gaza Strip. This enabled the army to kill citizens even more effectively and to present this as a consequence of heavy fighting within dense populated areas; that is, as an inevitable result of the circumstances rather than of Israeli policy.
