"Even if the clash over Gaza exacts a price in blood, it will be tiny compared to the blood and victims that we will have to pay in decades of conflict with the Palestinians." So says senior Labor MK Ephraim Sneh, who is running in today's Labor election for a senior ministerial post in the Cabinet. Sneh made his remarks in an op-ed in the Maariv newspaper.



"A cruel and destructive civil war formed the democratic character of the United States," Sneh wrote, and "the conflict amongst ourselves is unavoidable."



"Next week," Sneh concludes, "a new government will be sworn in. If it has courageous and determined members, it will meet the challenge of the conflict that has been forced upon it – and will win." Sneh is the son of the late Moshe Sneh (Kleinbaum), a four-time Knesset Member and member of the Israel Communist Party's Political Bureau.



Haaretz columnist Yoel Marcus has written – this past August 31, for instance - that an elite army unit should be charged with removing settlers, "even if that involves bloodshed."