UNITED NATIONS, Dec 31 (Reuters) - Arab countries called an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday to debate the violence in Gaza, demanding in a draft resolution an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants.

The evening session adjourned without a vote being called and diplomats said negotiations would be held in coming days over the draft, which Western delegates described as unbalanced and focusing almost entirely on Israel's actions.

The resolution, presented by Libya, called for "an immediate ceasefire and for its full respect by both sides." It also demanded protection for Palestinian civilians, opening border crossings into Gaza and "restoration of calm in full."

It denounced "the excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force by Israel" but its only mention of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel was a vague reference to "the deterioration of the situation in southern Israel."

"It's going to need a lot of work," one Western diplomat said of the resolution.

A senior Hamas leader has been killed by an Israeli air strike on his home in the Gaza Strip, Hamas officials say.

Nizar Rayyan, the most senior Hamas figure to be killed since 2004, had urged suicide attacks against Israel.

News of the strike came on the sixth day of Israeli strikes on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian medical sources say 402 people have been killed. Israel says it is trying to prevent militants from firing rockets into southern Israel.

JERUSALEM, Dec 31 (IPS) - This is the most senseless of all the wars that Palestinians and Israelis have fought, says Israeli President Shimon Peres. The futility, he suggests, stems from the Hamas insistence, ever since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, on continuing to shell Israeli towns and villages.

"Their shooting has no point and no logic. Nobody understands what are Hamas's goals," said Peres, speaking alongside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who was briefing the President on the state of the war Tuesday evening.

"The Gaza offensive will not end until our goals are reached," said Olmert in response to reports that Israeli defence officials were considering a 48-hour truce in the devastating air attacks prior to possibly launching a major ground operation.

So, what are Israel's goals?

There seems to be national consensus -- at least among Israeli Jews -- on the two declared objectives of the military operation: long-term ceasefire, and deterrence -- that Hamas is compelled to hold its fire.

The Israeli consensus extends to another front -- there is already a 'ceasefire' with respect to the Feb. 10 Knesset (parliament) election. So much so, that the front-runner in the polls, right-wing Likud opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu, has been enlisted to front Israel's information campaign to the world.

Netanyahu, even within the guise of national advocate, is positing the war targets in much starker terms than the governing centre-left coalition.

Israel has promised a "war to the bitter end." Yet history is full of examples showing that battling an organization like Hamas is almost futile. It is a lesson Israel learned just two short years ago.

It was almost a century ago when the British soldier T.E. Lawrence described for posterity the World War I revolt of the Arabs against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East. Lawrence helped organize the revolt, and he famously said that combating such an uprising was "like eating soup with a knife."

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