Just Solution

"We will not tolerate fire on our towns and cities and our children and Hamas will pay a heavy price. We are in the midst of a military operation. We need, as I've said and I'm saying again, patience, determination and resoluteness."
"Therefore I have ordered the military to significantly broaden its operation against Hamas terrorists and against the other terrorist groups inside Gaza."
"I call on you to display patience because this operation could take time."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

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  Smoke and debris rise after an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip seen from the Israeli side of the Israel Gaza Border, July 9, 2014.

Israel's partner for peace, the Palestinian Authority's Fatah President Mahmoud Abbas now once again accuses Israel of "genocide" in Gaza, as the second day of Operation Protective Edge reached a Palestinian death toll of 57. From Tuesday to Wednesday Israel has launched air attacks on over 400 sites in Gaza. The airstrikes are a response to the over 160 rockets fired from Gaza into Israel.

The insistence from the Palestinian Authority is for Israel to stop attacking Palestinians. There is no word that they have appealed to their unity government partner Hamas to cease and desist. That appeal would be ignored, but it would speak volumes about recognition of what must first take place before the IDF pulls back from a complete invasion.

Hamas has had two years since the last Israeli offensive into Gaza, to replenish its arsenal of rockets. Qatar was extremely generous in funding replacement rockets in 2012, enabling Hamas to amass a store of tens of thousands of rockets. Rockets rather more sophisticated than those that were being replaced, and certainly capable of firing off at longer ranges.

These are, just incidentally, rockets placed in depots everywhere in Gaza, able to be fired off from densely occupied streets whose residents are then in effect human shields whose safety Hamas sees no problem in compromising, should the IDF fire back precisely from where the rockets emanate. The better to arouse world opinion in condemnation of Israel for defending itself at the cost of civilian lives.

Of those 160 rockets, with more raining down every hour, one reached the northern Israeli town located 60 miles from Gaza, of Hadera for the first time. Air raid sirens now go off regularly not only in towns close to the Gaza border like perennially assaulted Sderot, but in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as well, as rockets are aimed further and further, now able to reach about 60% of the Israeli population in their clumsy sorties.

Israeli flares illuminate the Gaza Strip on Monday night. (Jack Guez / AFP/ Getty Images)

Israeli officials have named the offensive an 'open-ended operation', its purpose to put a halt to the unending heavy rocket fire from Gaza. Israel mobilized its forces, calling up reservists with the possibility it may launch a ground invasion, the last possible resort to quenching the zeal of Hamas to continue its unending rocket barrage. Israel's Iron Dome defence has succeeded in obliterating some of the incoming rockets; several over Tel Aviv.

The two-year truce that Hamas had maintained over the past two years, arranged by Egypt's then-president Mohammed Morsi, collapsed on the Hamas-approved abduction of three Israeli Jewish seminary students as they hitchhiked their way back home from the West Bank to Jerusalem by Hamas operatives who were heard on their cellphone beside themselves with glee at their success, a cellphone conversation that also recorded the shots that killed the three before they were hastily buried under rocks close to where they were abducted.

Hamas members in the West Bank where Fatah had agreed they could henceforth be stationed as part of their unity government agreement, have been arrested in their hundreds. Hamas's response to this was to step up rocket fire. Their refusal to halt the fire led to the government of Israel decision to take direct action. While Egypt is once again attempting to broker a ceasefire it likely does so with far less commitment than formerly, when the Muslim Brotherhood catered to Hamas, their offshoot militia.

Both are now considered by Egypt to be terrorist groups. And Egypt no doubt considers it in their own best interests should Israel pound the senior members of Hamas into the grave. Israel is doing its best to accommodate that view for its very own very good reasons. As an aside, Hamas must have been delighted when a group of Israeli Jewish hardliners decided to commit a counter-atrocity against a Palestinian teen.

The aftermath of which provided the perfect opportunity for Palestinians in the West Bank to express their rage in violent confrontations with police and Israeli military. That's one version of unity; West Bank Palestinians in solidarity with Hamas and Gazan Palestinians against their oppressors. Their Israeli Palestinian counterparts have shown them the way, in challenging the authority of the Israeli State in violent rampages.

Airstrikes are flattening homes of Hamas leaderships in Khan Younis and elsewhere, the concrete structures reduced to rubble. Israeli authorities, as is their wont, warn the residents of such houses slated for destruction, that they would be best to expeditiously vacate the structures. Some have chosen not to, preferring the death of martyrdom. Others mourn the loss of their homes and are shaken with fear and grief.

An Israeli missile explodes on impact in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, on Tuesday, July 8, 2014. The Israeli military launched what could be a long-term offensive against the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Tuesday, striking nearly 100 sites in Gaza and mobilizing troops for a possible ground invasion aimed at stopping a heavy barrage of rocket attacks against Israel. (AP Photo/Eyad Baba)

Residents as they panic and run for their lives, shout "Allahu Akbar! [God is great]", the very same blessing that Islamist jihadists shout out in a triumph of slaughter when they embark on a suicide mission to kill as many unfortunates as possible in a blast that will have major effect. The streets of Gaza City are desolate and still. Residents seek comfort in their fear by remaining indoors or fleeing to areas they feel will be safer.

Hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens have been ordered to remain close to their homes. Streets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are also deserted in view of the attempted rocket strikes and the air-raid sirens in those two of the country's largest cities. Special bomb shelters were being opened by the Jerusalem municipality. Intercepted by the rocket defence system, Hamas will continue trying.

No injuries yet in Israel as three rockets landed in the Jerusalem area, the impacts creating booms heard from the city centre. Hamas rockets have now an estimated five million people in their range within Israel. Israeli forces apprehended Gazans attempting to infiltrate a military base by sea in southern Israel. Four attackers managed to come ashore to hit the base with grenades and automatic rifles, before being stilled by death.

"If we need to go inside in a ground operation, then we will do it. These things are on the table. These options exist. We will not stop anything until the rocket firing ends."
Yitzhak Aharonovitch, Internal Security Minister