For Israel what is at stake is the national conscience, the moral compass of the people. Putting aside the civilian casualties for a moment, a fraction of those whom the Palestinians have lost, what Israel has lost in the past forty years, since 1967, is the innocence it believed it had, best symbolised perhaps by the sun-bronzed kibbutzer that Amos Oz holds up in admiration in his memoirs. Today that is a fond memory, a dangerous delusion. Violence corrupts the violent, and it does so absolutely.
