A shaky ceasefire that went into effect just before midnight on Monday appears to have taken hold, at least temporarily, bringing an end to two days of hostilities between Israeli Occupation Forces and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza, which involved dozens of Israeli airstrikes on the besieged Gaza Strip and 90 rockets fired towards Israel. A total of three Palestinians were killed, and at least four more injured from Israeli attacks, while no Israelis were harmed by the Gaza rockets.
The previous ceasefire that, according to Israeli media was set to go into effect at 10pm, immediately crumbled when Israel intensified its strikes against the Gaza Strip following an announcement by the PIJ that the group had completed its military response to the two Israeli crimes that had provoked the retaliation, prompting the launching of additional rockets by PIJ in response.
This followed the decision made at an emergency security meeting called by Netanyahu, to continue carrying out strikes against the Gaza Strip Monday night.
The prime minister ordered the continuation of the operation against terror organizations in Gaza,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office said after the meeting.
This latest escalation was provoked, like always, by Israel, when its forces committed the war crime of openly desecrating and stealing the corpse of a slain Palestinian Resistance fighter after shooting him to death near the Gaza border fence early Sunday morning.
In a statement on the ceasefire, a senior Islamic Jihad official reiterated that any further Israeli aggression will garner a response by the Palestinian Resistance group.
It was agreed that the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip is mutual and synchronous,” he said, adding that his group’s members “will respond to any breach or violation of the ceasefire.”
For his part, Netanyahu on Monday issued a series of ominous threats, which included threatening an all-out war on Gaza, and a threat to target Hamas leadership if itdidn’t dismantle the PIJ themselves.
“If you don’t shoot them, we will shoot you. I’m talking about a war,” he said. “I only go to war as a last option but we have prepared something you can’t even imagine.”
This demand that the Palestinian Resistance leadership in Gaza kill fellow Palestinians who are members of a different Resistance faction for retaliating against Israeli crimes committed against its own members is rather absurd. For its part, Hamas issued a statement describing the rocket attacks as a “natural result of the continued crimes of the occupation and its violations against our besieged people and the people of Gaza”.
Speaking at a West Bank settlement later in the day, Netanyahu added even more threats.
“I don’t plan to let up,” he said. “Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad need to understand that this will not continue. If they do not stop the fire altogether, not just for a day or two but in general, then we will have to activate the plan we prepared for a broad campaign.”
“There are new, surprising things in it that were in neither [operation] Cast Lead nor Pillar of Defense nor Protective Edge,” he added, referring to the Gaza wars of 2008-9, 2012 and 2014.
This rhetoric mirrors a similar threat of a Gaza war made earlier in the month, when he announced Israel had prepared a major “surprise” for Gaza that would be “different” than any of the wars that came before.
I'm telling you as prime minister, I don't rush to war," Netanyahu said during an interview with Israel's Channel 20. "I don't puff out my chest, bang drums and blow trumpets. But we're preparing for Hamas the surprise of their lives. I won't say what it is, but it will be different from anything that came before."
On an interview with Radio Jerusalem on Monday, the Prime Minister also said that “there may be no escape but to go out in a battle to clean Gaza.”
Statements by the Israeli Defense Minister echoed these sentiments that Israel was preparing to launch a full-scale war effort against the Gaza Strip.
“We don’t want a larger war, but we are preparing the plans, and if there is no choice, we will have a forceful campaign,” Defense Minister Naftali Bennett told the mayors of southern Israeli towns Monday.
“We are preparing a plan to fundamentally change the situation in the Gaza Strip,” he also said at a conference in Jerusalem.
The Times of Israel went on to note that: “The Israeli military also began sending additional tanks and artillery cannons to the Gaza border area,” another sign Israel is preparing to launch a large-scale military operation against the Gaza Strip.
If it does implement its plans to do so, based on the statements of Israeli officials, it looks to be a war like no war before. Netanyahu is far from alone in hinting that such a war is right around the corner.
“IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi warned Monday evening that the fighting may not be over yet,” the Times of Israel reported. “Kohavi said the situation was fragile and could unintentionally escalate to a full-blown conflict and an IDF operation,” the article said.
Others see such an operation as a foregone conclusion.
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said that he believes the government is “closer than ever to a decision to launch a large-scale operation” in the Gaza Strip.
“It isn’t ideal to make such a decision on election week, but it needs to be made as early as possible by the prime minister and the cabinet,” Erdan told the Kan public broadcaster.
Indeed, it appears that this planned war on Gaza is inevitable, and not a matter of if but rather of when. Netanyahu’s political opponents in the upcoming election have been critical of what they deem is weak policy towards Gaza, and are probably more likely to immediately launch such a wide-scale operation than Netanyahu, if Netanyahu is defeated in the polls on March 2. There is also a good chance that Netanyahu is tempted to kick off such an operation this week in order to boost his support before the election in the face of the political criticism coming from the Israeli far-right.
The recent threats to wage war on Gaza are directed towards Gaza militants, enshrouded in the promise to fight “terror” under the guise of targeting “terrorists.” But make no mistake, if and when such a military operation is launched, it will intentionally target the civilian population and civilian infrastructure, just as the IDF recently promised it would do “in the next war,” in threats made against Gaza, Syria and Lebanon just three months ago on Christmas Day.
Such threats are not isolated, but all too common, and betray the deep racist hatred of Arabs inherent among right wing Israeli leadership, and the dark Zionist agenda to ethnically cleanse the entire land of Palestine of all Palestinians.
For now there is relative peace in Gaza, but all it will take to change that is any sort of a new Israeli aggression, based on any number of false pretexts like the oft used ‘preeminent self defense’ line. All they have to do is claim Islamic Jihad was planning a new attack on Israel, and then respond to that alleged threat, and rockets would likely begin to fly towards Israel once again, giving the Zionists the only pretext they need to launch the already planned operation, which according to the Israeli leadership itself will be nothing less than the largest-scale war on the Gaza Strip that it has seen yet.