:::I see your point, but lets base ourselves on how military historians view wars. For example, there is general agreement that WWII started when the Germans invaded Poland. However, in the Spanish Civil War there was heavy involvement of all the belligerents, including testing of military hardware and international brigades with tacit support of the a section of their home governments. There was the Auchluss of Austria and Bohemia. And then there was the treaty of Versailles. Ans the Soviets invaded Finland, and had a border war with the Japanese. And the USA didn't join the war (thus making it an European/Asian war) until the end of 1941 with the attack on Pearl Harbor (which itself is problematic, as there had been more or less open support on the part of the USA - including air combat - to the Chinese forces, both nationalist and communist). So even tho we have a generally recognized start of WWII as being the September 1939 invasion of Poland, there is a lot of non-fringe debate that questions this, see here: World_War_II#Chronology. So yeah, war is complicated thing. And I agree with the view that Operation Cast Lead was a direct response to rocket attacks, but rocket attacks from the view of any military historians are not an offensive, but harassment operations or some such. In strict terms, the Palestinian actions are defensive operations intended to stand their ground, but I do understand that the use of such terminology - which is completely neutral from the perspective of military science - can be seen as politically problematic; so the less scientifically precise Counter-offensive works. You see, its not about the political chronology, which is covered in the background section, but the military chronology. It is clear that the initiative here was held by the IDF - so its their offensive, and any response is either a defense or a counter-offensive, as there was no strategic retreat the remaining possible response. 

 :::That said, I see that you and Nablezzy both support the idea I floated at the beginning of the sections of merging the military actions into a single chronological section, rather than separating them out. I think this is sensible and much less prone to bias.