Agree with him or not, Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times is at least a serious writer. Usually. Today, however, he offers one of the more silly proposals for ending the current strife in Gaza: “relax the blockade of Gaza in return for a renewal of the ceasefire that ran out in December.” It is hard to imagine a plan more likely to strengthen Hamas. An end or even a relaxation of Israeli sanctions would be seen (accurately) as sign of the “Zionist entity” bowing before Hamas’s rockets.  And of course far more rockets and other weapons could then be smuggled in through a suddenly porous blockade.