More than 160 Palestinian fatalities have been counted in the first six days of Israel's Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip. According to the Palestinian Gaza-based Ministry of Health, more than two-thirds of the fatalities are civilians, and more than 22 of them are children. The devastation in Gaza is enormous and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) estimate that they still have a long way to go and that the operation will last for many days to come.
To date, the Israeli air force attacked over 1,300 targets, including Hamas institutions, mosques, the residences of the organization's militants and, of course, rocket-launching sites. The initial Israeli proposal — namely, "quiet will be met by quiet" — was answered with a salvo of rockets on Tel Aviv. The movement's leaders went underground into fortified bunkers built to protect their lives, while leaving some 1.5 million residents in the Gaza Strip exposed to Israeli air force airstrikes.
