Attack/Counterattack

"The Cairo talks were based on an agreed premise of a total cessation of hostilities. When Hamas breaks the ceasefire, they also break the premise for the Cairo talks. Accordingly, the Israeli team has been called back as a result of today's rocket fire."
"This is the 11th ceasefire that Hamas has either rejected or violated."
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev

"Hamas does not have any information about the launching of any rockets from Gaza."
"The Israeli occupation is aiming through this escalation in the region to abort the talks in Cairo."
Sami Abu Zuhri spokesman, Hamas

Smoke rises from what witnesses said was an Israeli airstrike on Gaza on Tuesday. Israel struck in response to Palestinian rocket fire. Reuters

It is entirely possible that it is Palestinian Islamic Jihad that broke the ceasefire and began firing rockets again into Israeli towns, inviting a response from the Israel Defence Forces. They were not disappointed; with their deadly provocation, a response was not long in coming. And not long in coming were additional rockets from Hamas, as well, if that indeed does respect the order of events as Hamas claims it.

On the other hand, Hamas is the government in Gaza, and it has control of the territory. It has been known in the past to exert its influence on Islamic Jihad to refrain from firing rockets. And Israel, in the past has restrained its compulsion to respond to erratic rockets fired by Islamic Jihad into Israel. This time, however, there is an actual conflict in progress, and a legitimate state that does not respond to rockets fired at its cities and its citizens, fails in its primary purpose to protect them.

The dozens of rockets that the Palestinian terrorists have fired into Israel have seen their predictable response. And though Israelis may regret that two Palestinians were killed as a result, it's a moot point whether Islamic Jihad or Hamas really care about the welfare of Gazans, given their past and ongoing record of firing from within civilian areas and inviting a response back toward those same crowded civilian areas.

The result was that Israel withdrew its delegation from the Cairo ceasefire talks on Tuesday afternoon, to resume its own airstrikes. And when a building of the offices of Hamas' Al Aqsa TV station was hit, 21 people were wounded. One of the rockets set off air raid sirens on Tel Aviv and Israel's civil defence authority (Home front Command) ordered authorities to reopen public bomb shelters in 80 kilometres of Gaza.

Since Hamas focused its energy and funding on building the now-collapsed tunnels into Israel, preferring those to building bomb shelters for Gazans, no orders went out to reopen public bomb shelters in Gaza that do not exist. For its part, Egyptian security officials remain committed to bringing the two sides in the conflict to a ceasefire, unwilling to see its diplomacy flushed down the drain of hopelessness.

Yet hopeless appears just what the situation is, with Hamas insisting that it will agree to a cessation of current hostilities only with the opening of the borders blockading its economy. After sacrificing its people to the latest bout of conflict, Hamas aspires to demonstrate to them that their sacrifice helped to accomplish their mutually committed goal. To present them with nothing after a month of fighting would be to present themselves as ineffectual.

Israel sees no reason why Hamas should be rewarded for launching over 3,300 rockets and mortar rounds against the Jewish state. Israel is not immune to reason and its reasonable demand that Hamas demilitarize before Israel will commit to opening the border by lifting the blockade does not resonate well with Hamas to whom surrender of its weapons would be akin to total defeat, complete emasculation and surrender of its mandate.

Egypt's compromise proposal to ease the blockade without altogether lifting it, and opening Gaza's air and seaports to fulfill Hamas's demands do not impress Israel the least bit as long as Hamas remains in possession of its formidable arms caches. Giving the Palestinian Authority under President Mahmud Abbas the authority to return to operating Gaza and running its border crossings, while implementing international-backed reconstruction may represent certain advantages, but lack guarantees.

No country in similar circumstances, if it had a choice, would agree to granting an adversary the demands it insists must be met, while retaining the capability to mount ongoing and violent assaults against its neighbour. Hamas is unwilling to surrender its charter right to destroy Israel. And Israel will not permit itself to be destroyed; simple enough though the simple minds that govern Hamas appear to experience great difficulty parsing that.