Captain, our captain

When I started working at Haaretz in the summer of 2005, young and fresh out of university, on the eve of the disengagement from Gaza, I knew to expect at least one phone call each shift, one that would either throw me into fear or reassure me that I was in the right place. And there it was, the gruff British accent, no formal greeting other than a bellow through the line: "Who's in charge?" There was no choice those early days, those late night shifts, but to squeak: "I am."

The gruff was always David Landau, the British born editor of Haaretz, the founder of our English edition. Sometimes he called to scold, to criticize, to scream even, and often he just called to say 'well done,' a compliment which lingers still today.

It was never clear which message he'd have, and every phone call bore trepidation. He was a man who intimidated and impressed at once, inspired and encouraged, made young and eager writers like myself realize that there is a place for us in Israel, in journalism here. He was raised in the U.K., gave birth to Haaretz's English edition, and despite all religious and linguistic differences, became the editor in chief of the paper's Hebrew edition from 2004-2008.

He was the Godfather of Anglo journalism in Israel, the former editor of the website, Sara Miller, told me tonight. A better description would be hard to find.

David died tonight from a long and terminal illness. He will be missed, but not forgotten.

Gaza war over, Israel must focus on Syria border and the changing power play in the Middle East

Within 12 hours of a cease-fire signed with Gaza, ending 50 days of drawn-out war, Israel awoke last week to another immediate reality on its northern border: Mortar shells errantly lobbed by rebel forces clashing with President Bashar Assad's army, landed inside Israel's Golan Heights multiple times as rebels and Syrian forces enclosed their battles near the Quneitra crossing. Five days on, the Gaza war has been forgotten and Israeli interest has turned northward.

Israel's defense establishment is concerned by the heated battles along the Syrian border, but it is unlikely that the spillover from the north will result in any sort of persistent attacks or war. The battles along the Golan border are of yet contained and focused on Syrian territory, with no intelligence pointing at intentional crossover into Israel. Nevertheless, especially as United Nations forces controlling the border fall directly into the field of fighting, Israel is on alert and receptive.

The Quneitra border crossing, the only gate between Syria and Israel, was overtaken late last week by rebel forces comprising both the composite militias of secular fighters under the title of the former Free Syrian Army and jihadists aligned to the Al-Qaida linked Nusra Front. Quneitra is the sole crossing between Syria and Israel, and the territory near the border has been largely controlled over the last few months by Nusra rebels, who have an unconfirmed and silent gentleman's agreement with Israel to abstain from any infiltrations into its territory. The Syrian army has been fighting to retake the border, but the rebel forces are still in control.

Reports over the last months indicate that Nusra fighters were among the Syrian casualties treated by Israel both at its field hospital on the border and inside the territory over the last year, an indication of this silent security pact. Regardless of official confirmation of such a volatile agreement, the Israeli Golan remains safe from intentional attacks as the Syrian civil war, now shadowed by the presence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, remains on the other side of the border.

Nusra is no friend of Israel – it is an Al-Qaida entity, with Jihadist intentions, a brutal army with relentless means of war. But it is also not ISIS (the Islamic State), from which it declared distance earlier this year. ISIS envisions global jihad, having already secured large territories in Syria and Iraq, toward both the Jordanian and Turkish borders. Its forces near the Golan border are small, located in nearby villages but not upon Israeli territory. Nusra comprises mainly fighters from Syria, jihadis and anti-Israel, not bent on entering or conquering the territory south of the border, but rather on fighting Assad forces and ensuring their control within Syria and its borders.

Since the end of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the Quneitra crossing has been manned by the United Nations Disengagement Observatory Force (UNDOF). Late last week, following seizure of the crossing, the Nusra Front challenged UNDOF forces and demanded a handover of weapons. Forty-three UN soldiers, mainly from Fiji, adhered and were taken hostage. Another 81 UN soldiers, from the Philippines, refused surrender and barricaded themselves inside their position. On Saturday, Syrian reports emerged that dozens of the UN hostages were secured release by European forces (Irish) and made entry into Israel. Dozens still remain.

Israel is an integral component in deals pertaining to international elements harmed or abducted in Syria: Aside from the aforementioned treatment of wounded fighters and confirmed civilians from Syria, and the opening of its borders to freed UN and international elements, it also last week served as the crossing point for American journalist Pete Theo Curtis, who was freed via Qatar intervention after nearly two years in ISIS captivity. Israel's border with Syria is closed, opened in the last 30 years only to Druze citizens studying in Damascus or crossing over to marry in the northern country, and to the export of apples grown in the Golan. Israel wants this border to remain closed, for obvious security reasons, but is willing to engage itself in efforts for the safety of international forces and foreign journalists.

Israel's northern border is relatively safe of now, but the events on the Syrian side cannot be extracted from the developments both militarily and financially in the region, proving a change to the balance of power in the Middle East. Israel is fresh out of war, the Gaza Strip has yet to be rehabilitated or relieved of its years-long siege on air, sea and land ports. Southern communities along the Gaza border are at ill-ease, war-torn, and uncertain of their future security. Along with these considerations, Israel must now focus on its northern border, the strength of the rebel forces on the other side and the well-enforced entities guiding them financially.

Qatar, a small country with global financial and mediatory aspirations, is fighting to become a regional power. Along with Saudi Arabia, it is a crucial force in the containment and funding of Islamist entities in the Middle East. It attempted to mediate the truce between Israel and Gaza, but was overshadowed by Egypt. Its vociferous intentions to enter the role of major regional player should not be ignored however, despite its funding of Hamas and reported support of the Qaida-backed Nusra.

Israel would do well to take advantage of opportunity with Qatar, to secure both financial and security stability. There is no chance of diplomatic relations between the two countries: the gulf state is Islamic and funds anti-Israel elements. Nonetheless, Qatar wants to replace Saudi Arabia as the central force in the region. It is small, but determined. Israel should seize its chance with Qatar's aspirations to ensure not only security with Gaza, but the northern border as well.

World attention is now on ISIS and its brutalities, but a significant battle is being fought on Syria's border with Israel, and the rebel forces in control there. This is not global jihad, but a battle for Syria, a civil war that has already resulted in hundreds of thousands dead and 3 million refugees. Israel has involved itself in extracting hostages and wounded through its borders, safely distancing itself from military battle with forces on the other side. With a new Middle East order upon us, the question now is where and how Israel will react and with whom it will ally. The main concern for Israel must be safety along all borders, by whatever means necessary.

Dead or alive, Deif assassination attempt was a victory for Israel

The question of whether Hamas' military commander Mohammed Deif was indeed assassinated in the attack on his ostensible hideout in Gaza City Tuesday night has still not been answered, but the attempt itself scored Israel two major points: It proved the drastic improvement of Israel's intelligence capabilities in the Gaza Strip, narrowing down the location of top players in the military wing, and served as a major public relations victory in showing that Israel's main targets are the senior commanders overseeing Hamas' battles and rocket operation, rather than indiscriminate civilians.

The focus of Israel's operation in Gaza has moved beyond the mostly destroyed tunnels and waning rocket caches that the 45-day war has centered on so far: it is now the military commanders in charge of Hamas' activities that have returned to the lens of the Israeli defense establishment's periscope. Targeted assassinations have long been a part of Israel's modus operendi against terrorist entities, from Hamas to Hezbollah, and have resumed in full force following the collapse of the cease-fire talks in Cairo.

Deif's wife, infant son and teenaged daughter were killed in the attack on the home of Mohammed Yassin Dalou, the chief rocket commander in Gaza and member of an integral family of Hamas activists. The successful or failed attempt on Deif's own life, yet to be verified, was followed by two more thorough and proven assassinations the next night: the senior commander of the southern Gaza brigades, Mohammed Abu Shamaleh, and his Rafah brigadier, Raed al-Attar, integral elements in that region of the Strip, both heavily involved in the captures of Corp. Gilad Shalit in 2006 and of Liet. Hadar Goldin last month. These assassinations have severely weakened Gaza's southern command; though Hamas' military leaders are largely interchangeable, these were rocket and battle experts with lengthy experience and heavy authority over Rafah and the surrounding area. For the near future at least, Rafah under Hamas is unguided, and under uncertain command.

Israel was able to pinpoint both the location of the Deif family and that of the two southern brigadiers through huminet intelligence, its strongest yet in a war of limited Shin Bet sources, following three failed cease-fires and dead-end negotiations. Twenty-one collaborators are said to have been executed by Hamas following the assassinations, indications of the veracity of this cooperation and of others yet to emerge.

Hamas insists that Deif was unharmed in the attack on the Dalou home, declaring the day after his alleged assassination that he was alive and well and remained the commander who would lead the units to conquest of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Yet most analysts, and basic intelligence, estimate that Deif was killed in the attempt. Deif was already severely disabled by four prior attempts by Israel on his life, and served in the last few years as a figurehead alone, while the actual operations were overseen by acting chief Marwan Issa. Without video proof or at least an audio message from Deif, there can be no clear verification of his survival or demise.

Palestinian news agencies released a certificate of death containing two names immediately following the fatal attack on the Al-Sultan neighborhood in Gaza, where the Dalou family lives and the Deifs were staying: those of Deif's wife Widad, and their 7-month-old son Ali. A second certificate circulated by the Gazan agency Saham News hours later showed a near identical document, with another line inserted above, naming Mohammed Deif, born in 1965, as a third fatality in the attack. Both documents are suspect to forgery; no clear answer has yet emerged which was indeed doctored, or by whom.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas held a little-publicized, but very important meeting with Hamas' political chief Khaled Meshal on Thursday in Doha, alongside the chief Palestinian negotiator to the Cairo talks, Ahmed al Azzam, and the Qatari ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

At the end of these talks, Meshal plans to travel to Cairo with Abbas, for the first time since his visit to Gaza two years ago, as a persona very non grata in Egypt. The decision whether Egypt will allow his entry depends on the outcome of Thursday night's discussions: he will likely only be invited into Cairo if the talks with the Palestinian Authority delegation yields results for a future arrangement and if his purpose in Cairo is to close such a deal.

Deif, by most intelligence and basic scenarios, did not manage to reach his ninth cat life, nor even a fifth miraculous survival of Israeli assassination attempts. He has already achieved godlike status in Gaza, despite holding only a nominal commander status since his last devastating injury by Israel in 2006.

Israel's assassination policies, harsh and lethal and of inevitable costs, have been questioned numerous times as to whether they are effective or a waste of energy and life. With Meshal now begging to return to Cairo, no sign of truce ahead and a severe Israeli intelligence dart on the heads of Gaza's military commanders, this policy seems ever more effective – not marked just by those who are killed, but by who is targeted and at what proximity.

Mohammed Deif, a skeleton of a human from four assassination attempts, is not only a figurehead commander to Hamas: he is a figurehead in Israel's targeted attempts as well. He has died four times before, one more, even final, will hardly make a difference. The tie has been broken by proof of Israel's intelligence in Gaza as the war enters its 46th day without sign of relent. Hamas has just a few thousand rockets remaining, but wants a war of attrition, willing to fight to the last explosive. Israel can now accede, knowing the attrition is on its side. Its army is strong and its intelligence in a formerly off-limits territory is tight, capable of weakening Hamas. The arm wrestle is on. One side must give. Hamas, always first to throw the shots, is already buckling. The only victory now will be back on the diplomatic battlefields of Cairo.

Rejection of this final truce would be a suicide pact for Israel and Hamas

Israelis and Gazans awoke Monday morning to an unsettling and familiar silence – quiet on both fronts as their governments agreed to a new 72-hour truce aimed at reaching a permanent cease-fire and a security arrangement for the Gaza Strip, one that will inevitably ease Hamas' iron hold over the coastal territory.

Both sides are well versed in what these heretofore redundant lulls mean: hourly countdowns as the truce holds - awaiting one false move - and come midnight on day three, the very real chance that the negotiations will prove fruitless and the fighting will resume. If this round of talks fails, the trade of fire will be harsher than before, and the consequences will be all the more devastating: Nothing will stop Hamas from launching the thousands of rockets and mortar shells still in its cache at rapid rate until they run out; Israel will make good on its promise to respond with relentless force, and a full-out invasion of the Gaza Strip will likely be its next desperate battle move.

This is the last chance for both Israel and Hamas. One more failed truce and the Egyptian mediators will have no further recourse to negotiate a future arrangement. Rejection of this draft, which awards unprecedented concessions to Hamas with guarantees for Israel's security, would be a suicidal move for both, setting the region back at least 10 years and ensuring an indefinite state of war with innumerable casualties and losses on either side.

Hamas has won Cairo's assurances that most of its demands will be met: Israel will halt fire, border crossings will open under Palestinian Authority and Egyptian supervision, Gaza will be rehabilitated through billions of dollars provided by international and inter-Arab forces (to be discussed in the next stage of talks), its fishing zone will be extended significantly, more monthly permits will be granted to allow Gaza residents to pass through Israel into the West Bank, and a prisoner release plan will be set with Israel at later stages of negotiations.

Israel has refused to relent on the opening of air and sea ports in the Gaza Strip. but has eased its firm demand for the demilitarization of Gaza, expressing willingness in internal deliberations to settle on assurances that the militant groups will not be rearmed. Hamas' main demand – that the blockade on Gaza be lifted – can only be achieved through this Egyptian draft, which enables the opening of land crossings via external monitoring and within guidelines amenable to Israel's security concerns. Even without direct sea and air access, Gaza will no longer be cut off from the world and if the transfer of goods and people across the land crossing is respected, may well see establishment of these ports in the not so distant future.

Israel, which refused to send its own delegation back to Cairo until the Palestinian factions agreed to the temporary truce, did not resume its end of the negotiations blindly. The team was in direct contact with Egyptian and international officials throughout, well-updated on the arrangements being made to simultaneously enable these gestures to Hamas without sacrificing Israel's own conditions for a future security agreement.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE were enlisted to fund the rehabilitation of Gaza, in addition to Hamas' main benefactor Qatar, to ensure that any flow of money and material through the soon-to-be-eased borders is not used for terror or military means. Millions of dollars were transferred to Hamas' leadership in the hours before the Islamist organization officially agreed to the temporary truce, to pay the salaries of its military men and government clerks – a factor that no doubt sweetened its resolve to agree to the cease-fire.

The Israeli delegation returned to Cairo before noon on Monday, after nearly 12 hours of quiet. The negotiations over the next two days will be tense and technical, as the mediators attempt to tune their draft to exactly the pitch both the Israeli and Palestinian sides want to hear. Back at home, Israelis and Gazans will just as tensely await the verdict: Will the cease-fire be extended? Will the blockade be lifted? Or will war resume again?

If this round of negotiations and the temporary truce holding it upright falter, there will be no chance for revival. Hamas will remain isolated, without avenue of repair for the destruction in the Gaza Strip or support for the thousands of residents orphaned, displaced and disabled by the war. It will fire its waning arsenal at Israel at rapid rate and find itself under full occupation again, with no end to the blockade in sight. Israel will be left to deal with the welfare of 3 million people and the rise of even more hostile jihadist militancy. The Egyptian outline must still be fine-tuned, but even in its unfinished draft, offers a win-win solution for both Israel and Hamas. It is the final frontier for any semblance of peace and security in this region and the only mechanism left to prevent a reoccupation of the Gaza Strip.

The Gaza-Israel war isn't over yet

Israel withdrew all of its forces from the Gaza Strip on Tuesday morning, at the exact moment that the 72-hour Egyptian-brokered truce was scheduled to begin and just as Hamas finished firing its last punctuating barrage of rockets, at the second the clock ticked 8 A.M. The cease-fire has held for nearly 48 hours now, but the war is not quite over, and this never-ending conflict between neighbors in such close quarters is even further from being resolved.

Both Hamas and Israel want this fragile truce, hinging on the current talks in Cairo, to extend beyond the Friday morning deadline – neither is prepared to return to war at this moment, but rifts are clear in the negotiations. Aside from the demands posed by Hamas, toward which both Israel and the external mediators are willing to show flexibility, there is one post-truce outcome that Israel is not prepared to abandon and that Hamas refuses to accept: demilitarization.

Hamas and the Palestinian factions of Gaza knelt this week in unconditional surrender to the Egyptian cease-fire draft, stipulating a 3-day lull in fighting before resumption of negotiations on any future agreements. It was the same exact same offer they rejected three weeks ago, before Israel embarked on its ground operation, and that they nixed once again last Friday after accepting and then rescinding with attacks on Israeli forces 90 minutes into that truce. They finally realized that there is no alternative to this offer they could not refuse and had refused twice already. Israel, which declared unilateral withdrawal and boycotted the Cairo truce talks earlier this week, emerged the strategic victor: the outline it drafted with Egypt at the beginning of the war is nearly one in the same as that which Hamas agreed to, the failed interventions of Qatar, Turkey and the U.S. in the last weeks filed and forgotten.

Hamas presented a 10-point list of demands in Qatar last month, as that aspiring political power attempted to mediate, including inter alia a withdrawal of Israeli forces, a cessation of operation on the tunnels, the opening of border crossings, the establishment of sea and air ports, a 6-12 nautical mile fishing zone, a lifting of the blockade, and the release of prisoners. Save the first two demands – which Israel carried out unilaterally – the subsequent clauses were omitted from the Egyptian outline, which in its presentation to Hamas is nearly identical to its initial form. Each of the following demands is still up for negotiation, and proposals on how to meet them in a way amenable to Israel and the international community are under discussion.

Israel has already begun to repair the border fence with Gaza and has lifted both the roadblocks in southern communities and the Home Front guidelines on safety during wartime, calling on citizens to resume routine; residents are free to return home, though most are reticent, filled still with the fear of a monster emerging from a tunnel under their children's beds, a real and concrete threat while the tunnels remained unmonitored.

In Gaza, the devastation is extreme. Nearly 1880 people have been killed, almost 10,000 wounded, and a quarter of the population has been displaced. The damage is estimated at some $5 billion. Aid has already begun flowing in: international entities from the UN to member countries, including Italy, U.S., Turkey, and the International Red Cross have sent tons of assistance; Israeli electric teams are working to repair the destroyed power lines and hundreds of truckloads of aid have passed through the Israeli border to Gaza. This rehabilitation will take years to conclude.

A generation of Palestinians in Gaza will not forget this war. Like their neighbors on the Israeli side, there is no guarantee that a monster will not attack in the middle of the night. Their parents have been killed, they have been dismembered, and their homes have been destroyed. A generation of Israelis is filled with the same hatred, not just toward Gazans, but toward all Arabs and Palestinians: these are their monsters, not innocent children, nor women, nor civilians; monsters that must be destroyed. The hatred the world hoped had been eradicated in the 10 years since the second intifada is stronger than ever.

Israel's hidden agenda, unsaid amid the very real rhetoric of destroying tunnels and halting rocket attacks, was to imbue in Gazans the realization that Hamas was a political force capable only of devastation and self-destruction, and thus lead to a democratic choice to let the Palestinian Authority resume control of the territory.

"Israel is hoping that external pressure from the outside might be combined with the internal pressure of people from Gaza when they realize the devastation [the Hamas leadership causes]," a former Israeli security official told me. "They might resist or at least complain, and these two pressures might bring a regime change, political change that might guarantee no more attacks [against Israel]."

This hope is optimistic at best and catastrophically self-defeating at worse. Hamas' popularity, as a resistance army capable of standing its own against one of the great militaries in the world for nearly a month, is higher than it was before the war. Even if the PA assumes control of the border crossings, and even if the unity agreement is reworded with Hamas to enable a democratic realization of this security situation, most Gazans do not see Hamas as the enemy Israel had hoped they would – they are disillusioned by war, and eager to live in peace and quiet, but they do not embrace Israel's rhetoric of Hamas as their primary monster.

If this cease-fire indeed manages to hold for the three days stipulated and beyond, it will be very difficult for Hamas to return to war. Israel has publicly disengaged, on alert in the area, but not in war mode. Hamas has lost nearly 2/3 of its arsenal and its tunnel operations are under tight Israeli surveillance.

The first two days of cease-fire have left Israelis and Gazans alike unsettled: there is no guarantee that the other side won't attack or that this respite is anything more than just biding time until the next war. For many Israelis, the disappointment stems from a sentiment that the goal of wiping out Hamas' capabilities has not been achieved. Infiltrations and rocket attacks are still possible: Gaza militants have 3,000 rockets and 10,000 mortar shells and Israeli intelligence on the tunnels is better than ever, but still limited. The army announced that its operation on the tunnels had ended after 32 were located and destroyed – but it is well aware that more exist beyond their intelligence.
For both Israelis in the south and Gazans, the basic activities of sleep, shopping, and going about daily life still just a cautious dream; for Gazans, the world as they knew it is devastated beyond belief.

A third intifada will emerge quicker than its predecessors unless the negotiations in Egypt following this quick truce stamp it down. Gazans, mainstream Israelis, and West Bank Palestinians are war-worn and hateful of their enemies. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose calculated decisions over the last month have won him enormous ratings in Israel, must take this final and waning opportunity to negotiate a settlement with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the caretaker of not only the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but now also the Gaza Strip, as its unity agreement with Hamas unfolds in the most concrete terms amid the Islamist leadership's loss of functional control over its territory.

The stakes are higher than ever. The future of both Palestinian and Israeli security now rest in the hands of Egypt, which has sidestepped the U.S. as the strongest mediatory force in the region; months of negotiations, rehabilitation, and security arrangements are still ahead. Anyone quick enough to say this war is over will find themselves just as quickly back in battlefield again.

Hamas can't lose this war, because it has nothing to lose

Ninety minutes into a 72-hour humanitarian truce facilitated by Egypt and reluctantly agreed to by Hamas, the calm was shattered and the fighting resumed. Palestinian militants opened fire on Israeli forces in south Gaza, prompting an artillery response from the Israel Defense Forces; rockets were fired at southern Israel and fierce battles ensued in the Strip. The fighting continued to escalate over the course of the morning and afternoon, with at least 90 Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers killed, a third said kidnapped by Hamas; the temporary truce, the longest scheduled lull to date in this operation, was halted in its infancy and forgotten - back to the battlefield and back to the drawing board.

By agreeing to the lengthy truce, Hamas in effect surrendered – to Israel's military pressure, to the superiority of the Palestinian Authority pushing it into negotiations, and to the Egyptian mediators drafting the terms of the proposal. It is not known whether the breach of truce on Friday morning was carried out by Hamas local militants at their own discretion or upon orders of the top echelon. The latter is unlikely, but regardless of which militants attacked and on what level, it is Hamas' political leadership that ultimately answers to and accepts responsibility for every military action, as the rulers of the Gaza Strip.

Egypt told the Palestinians this week, following the snub of its exclusion from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's intervention, that they would not be invited back to Cairo for further negotiations until a temporary cease-fire had been set in place. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal on Thursday in a furious bid to convince him to agree to Egypt's terms and to a temporary lull, as the only way to set into motion negotiations for an actual end to the war. Hamas is a serious organization with a calculated political echelon. Meshal's word to abide by the truce was solid, indicating the Hamas political echelon's readiness to take the next step and move toward a permanent agreement.

The 72-hour truce was intended to give the sides the necessary time to hash out the details of Egypt's revised draft – one that included numerous changes acquiescing to Hamas' demands, particularly freedom of movement through Gaza's southern border crossing. With calm on the battle front, an amenable agreement could be determined and the real negotiations – on the future security arrangements in Gaza and on its borders – could begin. Following the breach of truce, Egypt informed Israel and the Palestinians that its delegations were no longer expected in Cairo on Friday, its conditions firm and unchanged: No negotiations until a temporary cease-fire is in place.

The Hamas leadership is divided into three hierarchical but highly coordinated governing bodies: the Majlis al-Shura, a religious council nominally in charge of the movement's strategic decisions and supervision of its activities; followed by the political bureau, run by Khaled Meshal from Qatar and Ismail Haniyeh, his chief deputy in Gaza; and the subordinate Iz A-din Qassam Brigades, the movement's military wing.

Hierarchy aside, the three bodies' decisions are made in tandem with one another. The military wing is not a renegade branch free to act of its accord. Every decision on the military front must be made with the knowledge and blessing of the political wing and the ruling council. There are cracks in communication, however, and not all orders are carried out; a likely explanation of the initial breach of truce on Friday morning: This is particularly true among the rank-and-file of Hamas' military command, where there is a growing sense of distance and abandonment from the political leadership. If it was Hamas that breached the truce on Friday – and not members of a separate Palestinian faction – it was a decision made within the mid-level military command, either by militants in the trenches unaware that a cease-fire had been declared or by those acting in defiance of political order. Regardless of why and how the breach of truce emerged, however, Hamas has in its wake withdrawn from its agreement and returned to battle mode.

Hamas opened this war three weeks ago because it had nothing to lose: it knew that firing rockets on Israel would draw fierce aerial attacks and likely lead to a ground invasion, along with a serious death toll among its civilian population; it knew that its long-range rocket supply would be wiped out by rapid fire and Israeli strikes, and it knew that even if it won back its former allies Hezbollah and Iran, there was no way they could help replenish its arsenal or that arms would flow again into its tightly secured borders.

Hamas also knew that it had surprise weaponry and strategies capable of inflicting more harm than either Israel or the world could have anticipated. Through its labyrinth of tunnels it managed to store hundreds of mid-range and dozens of long-range rockets (far beyond Israeli intelligence estimates), and beyond that, its greatest weapon of all: the ability to infiltrate Israel and launch its own ground incursion on enemy territory.

Hamas militants have managed to enter Israel through these tunnels at least five times in three weeks, a number of ambushes into Israeli territory unseen since the war in 1948. A 3 km security zone has been demarcated along the border inside Gaza, but no such buffer is in place inside Israel – civilians and soldiers sit meters from the border, on top of the tunnel openings. Israeli forces have located and destroyed dozens of the tunnels inside Gaza, but many remain hidden, including the openings into Israeli territory. The infiltrations can and will continue until either a cease-fire is secured or Israel is forced to evacuate its border towns and create a security strip of significant radius – a complicated and strategically difficult endeavor.

In battle terms, Israel has already won this war: 63 soldiers killed and three civilians, compared to more than 1,450 Palestinian fatalities, among them 400-500 combatant according to IDF estimates, and unimaginable destruction of Gaza's cities and villages. Hamas' leaders have already bent to political pressure, prepared to negotiate, but are of the same mind as their militants and those of the other Palestinian factions – no surrender and no end except on their own terms. Hamas can't lose this war, because they have nothing to lose. Its militants are prepared to fight until Israel, military power or not, cries uncle – or until the powers negotiating a permanent agreement relent, and include its terms in their entirety, an unlikely scenario at this point. Gaza may be demilitarized in the end, as Israel and Egypt hope, but it may well be through Hamas' own self-destruction, in months and countless deaths ahead. Without a quick and immediate cease-fire, this war will continue indefinitely.

The UNHRC farce must not undermine an Israel-Gaza truce

Of all the United Nations agencies, the most obscure and self-defeating is the Human Rights Council. There are many organizations and bodies under UN auspices, some of them important for world peace – such as the Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – and those whose mandate is to clean the world of hunger and human injustices – the World Health Organization, the International Children's Fund, the Food and Agricultural Organization, the Refugee Agency and the Relief and Works Agency, tailor-made to deal with Palestinian refugees.

Each of these contributes to the betterment of humanity. The only UN body with the word human in its name, the UNHRC, is the most detached from humanity.

The UNHRC in Geneva returned last week to its favorite topic, one which it has focused on intensively from its very first session in 2006: Israeli crimes against humanity. To call it anti-Israel is an understatement, and one need not be pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian to deduce such from its track record.

In the 21 sessions since its inception in 2006 as the successor to the heavily criticized Commission on Human Rights, the UNHRC has released seven resolutions calling for investigation of Israeli human rights violations – one-third of its efforts. Four resolutions have been opened in that time against Syria (170,000 dead), two on Darfur (300,000 killed), and one on Libya (25,000 fatalities at the height of its 2011 civil war) – each of these countries guilty of extreme crimes against humanity. None of these resolutions or commissions of inquiry have yielded results other than deploring certain actions and a declaration of intent to investigate. None too, will its latest resolution on Israel.

The UNHRC's resolution on July 23 called for an urgent commission of inquiry into Israel's war crimes in the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem. It expressed "grave concern" over the lack of implementation from its previous commission charged with investigating human rights violations, led by Richard Goldstone, following the 2009 Gaza war, "convinced that lack of accountability for violations of international law reinforces a culture of impunity, leading to a recurrence of violations and seriously endangering the maintenance of international peace."

In the five pages of its latest resolution, Israel was noted 18 times – once calling for an end of attacks against civilians, including Israeli, and the rest deploring Israeli military aggressions, the incitement of extremist and illegal Israeli settlers, Israeli occupation, Israeli arrests of Palestinians, and Israeli failures to protect Palestinian civilians in accordance with international law. All important, all ignorant of the other side's own activities.

Hamas was not mentioned even once, not even in the brief clause demanding attention to the attacks against Israeli civilians. There was no clause recommending investigation into the Gazan government's use of civilian buildings as cover for its illegal tunnels housing weapons depots and launchers, nor into the widespread reports of its urging residents to ignore Israeli military warnings to evacuate – the word 'human shield' has never once been used in eight years of resolutions.

Twenty-nine of 46 member states voted in favor of the UNHRC's latest resolution, including India, in what has been seen as a major policy shift, as part of its alliance with the BRIC countries. Only the United States voted against the resolution; 17 countries abstained – all European. Their abstention, as the major voting bloc in the council, was tantamount to approval; in the UNHRC there is an automatic majority against Israel.

The resolution, as in most of the UN bodies – including the General Assembly and the Security Council - is not binding. It is a recommendation alone, one that reflects the "resolve" of a particular body, enforcing the views of its member states. There is little chance of legal intervention and unless the International Criminal Court or member states of the UNHRC choose to adopt the body's decision as legally binding nationally, the resolution will have no official impact on Israeli actions, nor can it threaten its legal status in international law.

What this resolution does, in effect, is isolate Israel as a violator of human rights, regardless of circumstance. In expressing its concern over the "lack of findings" in Goldstone's 2009 report, it neglects to mention that Goldstone himself retracted his findings of Israeli guilt of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity [an investigation which Israel refused to cooperate with]: "While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the UN committee's report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy," Goldstone said in his retraction.

Goldstone, who also served as chief prosecutor in the international tribunals of Yugoslavia and Rwanda following those genocides, criticized the UNHRC at the time of his retraction as a body that "repeatedly rush[es] to pass condemnatory resolutions in the face of alleged violations of human rights law by Israel but ... have failed to take similar action in the face of even more serious violations by other States. Until the Gaza Report they failed to condemn the firing of rockets and mortars at Israeli civilian centers."

The pattern is clear. The United Nations Human Rights Council has no bearing on international law, only on opinion. International efforts to determine crimes against humanity must not be left to an obscure council to determine – particularly not one in which nearly half of its members abstain in vote. There are tribunals for these prosecutions, obliged by international law to take into context the full picture – in this case, not just Israeli violations, but those of Hamas too. Any tribunal that fails to mention the crimes of Gaza's rulers has failed in its task of adhering to international law, regardless of its findings on Israeli actions.

The United Nations Human Rights Council should focus its efforts on the massacres still happening in Syria and in Iraq's Mosul region – where militias unbound by international law are at relentless and unsupervised war.

The conflict between Israel and Hamas – the latter which wishes to be seen as a viable regime with nearly three million people under its authority, with little military and political support – must first be concluded in a cease-fire between the two governments and then in a political agreement involving either the Palestinian Authority or an international supervising force, to ensure a long-standing cease-fire. Declarations of crimes against humanity on the part of Israel are premature, preconceived, and ignorant of the facts on the ground.

Flight ban to Israel was a Hamas victory, and that battle is not over yet

When most of the world's leading airlines canceled their scheduled flights to Tel Aviv this week, Israel rushed to dispel security concerns and Hamas claimed victory. But Israel's assurances were haste and the Islamist organization's crow was in place: It was indeed a strategic advance for Hamas, both in security terms and in psychological warfare.

The U.S. and EU aviation authorities issued their ban because they have no way of ensuring that a rocket aimed at Ben Gurion Airport or anywhere in central Israel does not hit one of their national carriers over Israel's airspace. Thirty-six hours after releasing the recommendations, both agencies reversed their decisions and flights were resumed, yet the damage was already done.

The initial decision to suspend flights was made just days after the Malaysia-bound MH-17 commercial jet was hit by a missile fired over East Ukraine and hours after a house in the central Israeli city of Yehud was completely demolished by a direct hit from a rocket aimed at the airport just a short distance away.

These authorities have flight advisories over just about every war zone on earth – from Mali to Libya and Syria, Iraq to East Ukraine. The recommendation to restrict flights over Israel – where dozens of rockets fly directly into the commercial air corridor on a daily basis – was sound, made in line with legitimate safety concerns. It was not, as some critics posit, a boycott of Israel or a deliberate bow by the international communities in Hamas' favor.

American and European carriers resumed their flights Friday after receiving Israeli security assurances, but the lifting of the ban might be short-lived: Two commercial planes, Air Canada and Easy Jet, were within minutes of landing at Ben Gurion the morning the flights resumed, when three Hamas M-75s were fired at Ben Gurion. Both flights quickly rerouted back over the sea, waiting for the all-clear sign before returning toward Israel and continuing their descent.

Thousands of internet enthusiasts followed the action on the live tracker flightradar24.com – there is no guarantee that Hamas is not doing the same, launching their rockets the moment incoming flights enter the radar.

Despite the sense of normalcy that abounds in Tel Aviv as rockets are intercepted mid-air close to the airport, the fact is that Israel is under rapid rocket fire from the Gaza Strip. Israel has pled with the international community to recognize the constant barrage of explosives targeting its citizens, yet rushed to assure the same countries that the security concerns should not affect air traffic. In terms of both international opinion and safety, Israel would have done well to hold off on these assurances.

Hamas has scored two main victories on this front: The first – strategic – was in successfully creating a volatile security trap. The threat to human life on the ground is minimal, especially considering the inaccuracy of the long-range rockets, but it is not foregone. Most of these rockets have been intercepted by the Iron Dome, with the main danger being falling shrapnel, but the defense system's success rate stands only at around 70 percent now, 20 percent less than at the beginning of the war. Commercial planes flying overhead at the moment a rocket is fired or explodes on interception impact are even more vulnerable than vehicles, buildings or living beings in Tel Aviv. The security threat mid-air is real and it is immediate.

Hamas' second victory – psychological - was imbuing in Israelis a sense of siege, first from the constant rocket fire and then from the realization that freedom of movement outside of our Middle Eastern island was suddenly restricted by the cancelation of flights. El Al and Arkia added flights to their schedule to accommodate stranded passengers, but at prices boosted some 150 percent. British Airways was one of the only international airlines to continue its regularly scheduled traffic to Israel, as did Turkish and Ukrainian airlines – neither of the latter particularly desirable destinations for Israelis at this point. Hamas, whether intentionally or not, has shown Israelis what it means to be under blockade.

Neither of these military advances by Hamas trumps the severity of the Israeli operation in Gaza. The IDF's goal was to demolish the tunnels housing rockets and launchers, and it is succeeding in that operation. Nearly 900 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed and more than 4,000 wounded; 35 Israeli soldiers and three civilians have died over the course of the war. Cease-fire negotiations are progressing, with indications that Hamas is willing to agree to an amended version of the Egyptian proposal offered two weeks ago.

Israel will win this war, but Hamas will declare itself victor – much as Hezbollah did in 2006, when it succeeded in showing Israel that the rules of the game have changed, regardless of the number of casualties or the impact on weapons strongholds. Militant organizations no longer rely on the guerilla warfare that once characterized them. Their strategies are improving, their training is tighter, and regardless of the body count at the end of the battles, their victories are real and they are immediate. In war, every battle counts.

The IDF's moral and legal dilemma in defining a 'kidnapped' soldier as MIA or fallen

The Israel Defense Force's official death toll in the Gaza Strip is now 32 – with a 33rd name released to the public and marked in red on its list of fallen, awaiting confirmation: Sgt. Oron Shaul, who Hamas claims to have kidnapped after attacking his APC in Gaza and killing the other six soldiers on board.

Shaul's status is in limbo. In a carefully worded announcement, the IDF said that the identification process of his remains was still in progress and that the inquiry would continue. The army has not released an official declaration defining Shaul as missing in action, nor whether he is dead or alive. This ambiguous statement reflects the sensitivity of the situation. Without saying so - except in hinted leaks to the media - the IDF estimates that there is no chance that Shaul survived the deadly attack on his APC. The vehicle was seen as a ball of fire, so one could only imagine the condition of those trapped inside. It took the army two days to identify the bodies of Shaul's six comrades and to confirm their deaths. So why the ambiguity on the part of the IDF?

The careful official wording of Shaul's status is rooted in the IDF's practice of categorization, which incorporates military and Jewish traditions, thus taking the problem beyond just a legalistic realm into a question of religious ethics and morality.

The IDF uses three main categories to define such cases. The first one is obvious: that the soldier was killed. This means that a body or body parts have been carefully identified, nowadays using DNA samples (though in the past only dental x-rays were used), and the soldier's remains are buried.

The second category is defined as "a fallen soldier whose burial place is unknown." This means that sufficient evidence has been collected verifying the soldier's death, either from intelligence sources or eyewitnesses confirming that he had died in battle, but that the body itself has not been found and recovered. There is a special plot in the military cemetery on Mount Herzl dedicated to these soldiers, most of them unidentified fallen from the 1948 Independence Day War.

The third category used by the IDF is defining the soldier as "missing in action," which, simply put, means there is no indication of his whereabouts or what happened to him.

In this case, the IDF is still trying to determine what exactly happened to Sgt. Oron Shaul.

Most of the inquiries into the circumstances of Shaul's disappearance are based on intelligence, with the hope – though without high expectations – that Hamas will make an official announcement declaring the soldier alive or dead, and if dead whether they are holding his body, parts of his body, or just the identification tag they displayed when declaring that he had been kidnapped following the attack.

Until the mystery is lifted, the IDF cannot and will not officially define Shaul's status – neither as missing in action or as dead.

There have been several cases in the past in which it was quite clear to the IDF that a soldier or soldiers had died, but the families refused to accept that definition, and battled the army in court to prevent the declaration of their sons as a fallen soldier or as a fallen soldier whose place of burial is unknown.

The most well-known example followed the battle of Sultan Yaakoub during the First Lebanon War in 1982, pertaining to three soldiers most probably killed in that battle, but whose bodies were not found.

Despite eyewitness testimonies describing the soldiers' tank as hit and obliterated, the families – who were religious – refused to allow the IDF to declare them as killed in action.

A more recent case involved the status of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, the two soldiers whose abduction by the Hezbollah sparked the Second Lebanon War in 2006, and whose bodies were returned to Israel after two years of lengthy negotiations. Hezbollah never revealed whether they had been killed before the kidnap or died in the militants' hands.

As it stands, the IDF has neither the intelligence, pathological or medical evidence proving Shaul's death, and as such cannot - due to tradition and army regulations - define him as killed in action or as fallen soldier whose burial place is unknown. But it also cannot yet define him as missing in action.

Hamas' terms for a cease-fire could be the answer for Israel

As Israel's operation in Gaza reaches into its third week, it can already be called a war, one with a life-expectancy of at least another week or two. Unless a cease-fire agreement is consolidated in the next few days that meets the terms of both Israel and Hamas, as well as those of Egypt, the ground incursion will continue and the number of casualties on both sides will triple.

This operation bears more similarities to the Second Lebanon War than either of Israel's actions in Gaza in 2009 or 2012, both in the alarming numbers of casualties among Palestinian civilians and Israeli soldiers, and in Hamas' well trained combat strategies and infiltrations, reminiscent of those undertaken by Hezbollah in 2006.

Hamas has made good on its promise of turning the Gaza Strip into a graveyard for Israeli soldiers, with at least 25 IDF deaths confirmed so far. The death toll among Palestinians has reached nearly 550, and though there are is no exact count of women and children among this number, the vast battles in crowded civilian neighborhood as well as the air strikes on hospitals, mosques and schools concealing Hamas' weaponry indicates a percentage far higher than the number of militant casualties.

Over 1,100 Lebanese civilians were killed in the 31 days of fighting in 2006, and 121 Israeli soldiers, with 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilians – at the rate this operation is going, half the time so far of Lebanon, the 2014 Gaza war will produce far more devastation. Hamas has insisted that it will keep on fighting, and its ground battles against Israel in the center of the Gaza Strip have been relentless, as has its rocket attacks against southern and central Israel. No long-range M-302 has been fired at northern Israel in nearly a week, signaling that either Israel has demolished this supply or that Hamas has hidden it well while it focuses on head-to-head combat and close range accuracy.

Hamas has lured the IDF into crowded neighborhoods in Gaza, increasing the casualties on both sides and surprising the Israeli troops with its tactics of ambush, particularly using anti-tank missiles, but its greatest surprise so far has been its infiltration through Gaza tunnels into populated Israeli territory. At least three infiltrations have been successful so far, begging the question of why the IDF does not focus its battles along the border to strike their openings, rather than being lured by Hamas into the crowded neighborhoods of Gaza City where these tunnels are based to hide headquarter operations and rocket depots.

Two channels of cease-fire negotiations are currently underway. Former National Security Adviser Giora Eiland defined them to me in our conversation tonight as such: the first, in Cairo, where the Egyptian mediators of the first proposal offered last week are negotiating with Israeli, Hamas, Palestinian Authority and international officials. UN Chief Ban Ki-moon arrived Monday for talks and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was due to land tonight with a message from his boss Barack Obama to reach a cease-fire as soon as possible.

On the other channel, Hamas is negotiating with Turkey and Qatar, and solidifying its stance that it will not bend to demands, telling Arab media outlets that its mediators on that end support its stance.

These two channels represent two possible outcomes: the first is the one offered and accepted by Israel and rejected by Hamas, which stipulates two phases of a cease-fire, beginning with a halt in hostilities followed by a negotiations process of future security arrangements. The second is coordinated by Hamas, with the apparent support of Qatar – its main and only benefactor – and Turkey, which calls for a one-phase cease-fire that encompasses all demands in one swift agreement.

Israel and Egypt are coordinated in the two-phase proposal, and even in the initial decision of the IDF to enter Gaza to locate the tunnels in an effort to wipe out Hamas' military capabilities and bring about the inevitable demilitarization of Gaza, be its future government run by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, or an international entity.

Considering Hamas' refusals, it is likely that Turkey and particularly Qatar – tasked as the overseer of any rehabilitation in Gaza post-truce – will yield the upper hand in the actual cease-fire to come. Israel has made clear that it will not interject in political decisions in Gaza, and has allied itself with Egypt to dismantle the military regime in Hamas. Israel is open to the Qatari proposals, however, and like Hamas, sees a benefit in the Islamist organization's main demand of opening the Rafah crossing - something Egypt is less inclined to agree to.

There are indications, however, that Egypt is willing to amend its cease-fire draft to accommodate this Hamas request, so long as the Islamist organization surrenders its military capabilities.

Despite Egypt's hesitation, Israel is likely to take a Qatari proposal based on Hamas demands into consideration. As long as the cease-fire stipulates a total halt to hostilities and demilitarization, Israel is amenable to the flow of international or Arab funds to rebuild Gaza (with a guarantee of no weapons influx), the complete opening of Gaza's Rafah border crossing with Egypt, and temporary eases on seaports and the crossing with Israel to ensure the rehabilitation of civilian life in the strip.

The international heavyweights now in Gaza, the UN Secretary General and U.S. President Barack Obama's top diplomat, want to see a quick a swift resolution. Should their negotiations yield willingness with Egyptian President Abdel al-Sissi to negotiate with the Qatari and Turkish drafts as demanded by Hamas, a viable cease-fire proposal could emerge by tomorrow morning – though will likely take more than a few days of deliberations before presentation.

The ball is in Egypt's court tonight, and Israel's immediately thereafter, once an outline of the proposal has been presented. Otherwise, the casualty and refugee numbers of the 2014 Gaza war will far surpass those of Lebanon. Israel is not willing to take that chance, particularly now as the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority have been put far on hold and the Iran nuclear talks have passed their deadline with barely any media attention.

Israel has no interest in seeing this war escalate, and neither does Hamas – no matter what gains it thinks it has reached, it depends on international support, funding, and moreover recognition, and with the rising number of casualties on both sides along with the demolition of its rocket depot, it knows it has little chance of surviving beyond the next two weeks, unless a cease-fire is reached.

Life, interrupted: The macabre humor of wartime Tel Aviv

A triathlete friend once told me, confidentially, that he straps on his heart rate monitor while in bed with his partner, to measure his pulse during sex. He updated me this week that he's found a new use for the toy, now that his work-out routine has been disrupted: he still wears it to bed, but now monitors his heart rate running to take shelter when the rocket siren sounds in Tel Aviv. In his mid-40s, he's managed to get it up to an impressive 180, and can sprint to the stairwell in just 23 seconds (including transition time of putting on pants and glasses). It turns out nothing improves interval speed quite like dodging rockets.

On the surface, Tel Aviv seems normal. The cafes are packed with hipsters and their dogs, top Israeli musicians grace the stages of the city's concert halls, and pedestrians still mill the streets as usual, on their way to work or to shop or to get a coffee.

Like the tide on our Mediterranean shores, however, the calm can be deceiving. Traffic has been noticeably lighter these last few weeks, cyclists have chosen to cancel their weekend rides on the empty roads for lack of shelter if a rocket strikes, and the beach that usually hums and booms mid-July is practically empty. Neil Young canceled his much-accoladed show this week, not as a boycott, but rather at the request of producers and the Home Front Command, fearing that rockets might be fired during his open air venue endangering the 20,000 or spectators who planned to attend the event.

"How much money have you saved on concerts this month now that nobody will appear in Tel Aviv?" a friend recently asked me. The answer is, a lot. When war rages, mostly outside of our borders, normal life is disrupted.

It's not Neil Young that I seek, though the idea of seeing this musician who sound-tracked my life as a teenager excited me; it's the freedom to live as I usually do in between wars – light, easy, sun-kissed. War rages in Gaza, nearly 300 dead so far, and my personal experience in the bubble of Tel Aviv is not immediate death, but rather fear and trepidation of what may come, a rocket or two a day, none fatal. As another triathlete friend recently said: 'Worst case scenario, you'll be injured and unable to run'. Indeed, this is the worst case scenario in my Tel Aviv under fire. I stick to the other side of the beach road when I run, where the buildings double as shelter (and shade from the burning sun).

Many Tel Aviv residents will harrumph, and wave away concerns from their friends abroad, saying it's not going to hit here and there's nothing to worry about, but the fear and the trepidation has taken its toll on everyone.

The pressure is on, it can be felt everywhere, but most people prefer to ignore the emotions bubbling beneath their bravado. This generalization of course does not apply to everyone, not to the poor families of the city's south, which don't stand in line with the leftist majority of the city, or the migrants, that have boosted the number of residents of our neighborhoods, fleeing from one war zone to the next, but it is the overwhelming experience here of the majority - the young and the cosmopolitan, those whose roots and future are in this city.

The war is on everybody's minds. The rockets get all of our heart rates rising, no matter what the likelihood of them hitting us and no matter if we are measuring with a fancy watch. Everyone has a friend, if not 10, called up for reserves, either awaiting entry to Gaza or one of the tens of thousands already inside.

In this bubble of ours, where anti-war and anti-occupation protests are the most prominent political expressions of those who do choose to acknowledge that we are at war, Tel Aviv residents are coping with the most effective weapon we have: humor. Black humor, as war requires. This is a city of pundits and humorists: from the pot-smoking 21-year-old just back from India to the 61-year-old artist sitting at the legendary Café Tamar, everybody has something to say.

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his extreme right-wing deputy defense minister, Danny Danon, for opposing a cease-fire and threatening to quit if it happened, the internet exploded with memes and jokes: 'Hamas' greatest victory', one internet analyst wrote, 'is getting rid of Danon'. 'I wonder if the army will bulldoze his home,' wrote another. When an unnamed Israeli official told the BBC on Thursday that a cease-fire had been consolidated and was imminent, the blogosphere was quick to chime in: 'That official is Danon. Don't believe everything you read on the Internet'.

Chaim Levinson, a colleague of mine at Haaretz and master of one-liners, has shot off some of the best zingers so far this war: From harping on the worried mother calling for animal-rights activists to intervene in the brutal death of a bird shot down amid an Iron Dome interception to comments on supermarket behavior – 'people are packing it in now, like there's a war, I keep trying to explain, it's just a clearance sale (Hebrew cognate for military operation)' - the expression of distance from the reality experienced by our southern neighbors is clear.

A ground operation is underway in Gaza, more than 160 sites have been hit with a target on the tunnels that run from north to south, hiding Hamas' infrastructure, its headquarters and its depots. More than a thousand rocket have been fired at Israel, raining on its south at more frequency than any winter storm. The death toll has reached nearly 300 in Gaza and two in Israel, a soldier and a civilian.

The bubble of Tel Aviv is aware of these developments, fears them, and is trying as hard as it can to remain detached. This war can last another two weeks, if not more; our friends are on the front, and our summer is lost. At least there is humor, to keep our heads above the frothy waters, as Gaza burns, our south fears for its life, and we run to shelter every day. Here in Tel Aviv, life is at best normal, just interrupted. Maybe we will even be able to swim beyond the local currents soon and return to life as we know it. Until then, we can only hope for cease-fire.

The real goal of Egypt's cease-fire proposal: Disarming Hamas and demilitarizing Gaza

Israel's acceptance of the Egyptian cease-fire proposal effective immediately and to be implemented within 12 hours is not just an agreement to halt this round of hostilities, but rather a calculated move by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to begin the process of disarming Gaza and castrate its Islamist rulers of its military capabilities once and for all, with the backing of the Arab world and the international community.

Hamas immediately rejected the offer, declaring it "meaningless," and continued its rocket barrages on Israel with rapid fire, launching short-range rockets over the course of the morning and long-range missiles at Haifa and the Tel Aviv area in the early afternoon. Netanyahu declared within hours of the cabinet decision that Israel would escalate its attacks against Hamas should the latter refuse to the proposal, and ordered the Israel Defense Forces to strike the Gaza Strip mid-afternoon in response to the ongoing rocket fire. Even if Hamas agrees to Egypt's offer, the crossfire should not be expected to cease until seconds before implementation.

The proposal - which calls for an end to Israel's aerial, naval and ground strikes against Gaza, and for Hamas to halt its rocket fire against civilians and border attacks - stipulates that the two sides will meet in Cairo under Egyptian mediation within 48 hours of the cease-fire implementation. Gaza crossings will be opened to allow the passage of people and goods only once the security situation has stabilized, according to the proposal.

The Cairo meeting is intended not only to monitor the two sides' adherence to the cease-fire and to discuss the security issues, but to enable Israel and the mediators to advance to the real mission on the agenda: the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.

Israel has maintained over the course of its eight-day operation in Gaza that it will not agree to any temporary truce with Hamas that would put a "band-aid" on the situation and allow it to resume its rocket fire on the civilian population this week or anytime in the future. Its goal is to "dismantle the terror machine."

The sole outcome the Israeli government is willing to accept is a complete destruction of Hamas' arsenal and a total disarmament of the Gaza Strip under an international resolution that forces the political echelon of the Islamist organization to drop its military capabilities and agree to a demilitarized Palestinian government there.

Both Israel and Egypt, along with most of the Arab world, have a vested interest in disarming Hamas entirely. Hamas is weaker now than it has ever been and will likely be coerced into agreeing to the cease-fire. Despite its currently stated objections, it has no other avenue on which to proceed. The Islamist movement is isolated and it is cornered.

Nearly 50 percent of Hamas rocket launchers and 40 percent of its projectiles have been destroyed in the last eight days; it has launched nearly half of the long-range missiles in its arsenal prior to the outbreak of the war, and without the support of Syria to refresh the influx of weapons, it will not be able to continue its rapid bombardment of Israel for long, with or without a cease-fire. A cease-fire would enable it to regain a place in the Arab world, from which it is now completely isolated and denounced. The pro-Islamist government in Qatar has been enlisted by Egypt as a partner in the mediation process set to commence in two days, to help in the rebuilding and rehabilitation of Gaza once the operation has ended.

Israel made it clear over the 24 hours that preceded its acceptance of the Egyptian proposal that a cease-fire was not on the agenda. Troops and tanks were deployed en masse on the Gaza border, poised for a ground operation, but government officials declared cautious willingness to actually invade.

Israel's acceptance of the cease-fire, therefore, is not surrender in the face of mass rockets, but rather its next calculated military move in its operation against Hamas, an alternative to a ground invasion.

A ground invasion would have enabled Israeli troops to search door-to-door for Hamas' leaders and its arsenal, but at the price of human lives, both Israeli and Palestinians. Former Israeli diplomat and analyst Danny Ayalon told me yesterday that Israel was willing to continue its aerial strikes on Gaza and sustain rocket fire for another 7-10 days, until Hamas' arsenal was exhausted. Israel is prepared to keep fighting, but knows that playing this round to the end will not prevent a future resumption of hostilities.

Israel was no doubt privy to the drafting of the Egyptian proposal and its careful stipulation of the "security issues" to be discussed in Cairo following implementation of the deal. Hamas officials told Arab media this morning that their rejection of the proposal was in part because they had not been told of its clauses in advance.

Egypt's mediation is its way of stepping into the operation, allied with Israel, to put an end to the terror machine in the Gaza Strip. If Hamas refuses to accept the cease-fire, it will in effect mean surrender to Israel. With the rest of the Arab world and the international community ready to clean Gaza of its arsenal, Hamas has no choice but to comply - if not today then tomorrow or in the next few days. Otherwise, the Israeli strikes will only intensify as will the Islamist movement's humiliation and isolation.

Hamas is waging a war of attrition, pushing to maximize casualties on both sides

Hamas is waging a war of attrition on Israel. Isolated from its former allies and benefactors, its smuggling tunnels flooded, Hamas has little to lose and much to gain by dragging Israel into all-out war.

Gaza's rulers want Israel to embark on a ground incursion, a move Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhau has been desperate to avoid. Hamas' goal is to besiege Israel with rapid rocket fire, target its infrastructure, frighten the Israeli public, and wear down the defense establishment until it has no other option but to invade.

While Hamas' shorter-range rockets, aimed at dense population centers along the Gaza border, are capable of causing civilian casualties and damage with fairly decent accuracy, its mid and long-range projectiles – which can reach up to 200 km – are less accurate.

Hamas' aim is to kill and injure civilians, but the chances of such occurring with the long-range rockets are low. It therefore targets its projectiles at both civilian populations and at significant Israeli installations, such as power plants, major army bases, and the airport, for the added bonus of damaging Israel's infrastructure.

At least 7-10 rockets were fired at Tel Aviv on Saturday night, preceded by a Hamas warning that a barrage would occur at 9 P.M. exactly to mimic the IDF's 'knock on roof' policy warning civilians to seek shelter. The rockets were fired seven minutes later, with no hits and no casualties, and the city resumed its schedule of weekend activities within minutes. Such a heavy barrage has not been recorded in Tel Aviv since the Iraqi scuds of 1991, over a 21 day period, and the Egyptian bombing of the Central Bus Station in 1948.

The likelihood of a single civilian who does not seek shelter being struck by an M-75 or the Syrian-made M-302 is one in several millions. The eight Iron Dome defense batteries deployed across Israel have had about an 80- 90 percent success rate in intercepting the rockets fired so far during this operation, but they cannot stop fragments, especially the rocket engine, from surging to the ground after mid-air explosions. The danger to human life from these projectiles, therefore, is more likely to be caused by fallen shrapnel from an intercepted rocket or from accidents while seeking shelter in a panic.

A ground incursion would enable Hamas' underground city, with its hidden headquarters, to secure fatal blows to a high number of Israeli soldiers. An invasion would mean further destruction of its rocket cache, but Hamas is more concerned with killing and maiming Israeli soldiers, its "victory photo" in this war. With a significantly higher supply of short-range rockets, it will still be able to aim at civilians close to its border, even as its longer and mid-range missiles are destroyed.

At the beginning of the war, there were approximately 10,000 rockets in the Gaza arsenal, about 1/3 controlled by Islamic Jihad and the rest by Hamas. Of these, only some 200 M-75 (range of 75 km) and fewer than 50 M-302s (range of up to 200km) remain – without Syria's support, the stock of these long-range missiles is preciously dwindling. Hamas fires these mid and long-range missiles strategically, at peak morning and evening hours to maximize its chances of inflicting casualties and frightening the general public, but it knows that the supply will soon be exhausted, with no benefactor to replenish it. The only way for Israel to wipe out the thousands of shorter-range rockets still in cache and aimed at its south, is to go in on the ground to locate and demolish them.

Hamas and the Islamic Jihad have fired nearly 700 rockets at Israel from south to north over the course of five days - at a rate of about one per 10 minutes, according to Israel Defense Forces' figures – seriously wounding two people. Israel has struck almost 1200 Gaza targets – a rate of one per 4.5 minutes – killing nearly 130 people and causing about 800 injuries, most of them women and children. During the eight-day Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012, Israel attacked 1,500 sites in Gaza and killed 167 – close to the same number in nearly double the time.

Hamas hides its weapons under civilian institutions, such as schools and orphanages, hospitals and mosques. It tells Gazans to ignore Israel's warnings to abandon buildings targeted for air strikes, and orders them to stand on the rooftops as human shields. Its goal is not to reduce the number of casualties among its own people, but to increase the number of fatalities on both the Israeli side and on its own, as a propaganda tool to draw sympathy for its losses.


Smoke rises in Gaza after an Israeli strike. Photo by AFP.

Israel has limited human and signet intelligence in the Gaza Strip, sufficient enough to pinpoint a good deal of targets to demolish, but not all. Israel underestimated, for instance, the number of long range M-302s which had made their way into the Gaza arsenal – had Israel known, these would have the first and primary targets in its opening strikes, as they were in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2012.

The Israeli defense establishment has been putting off invasion for five days, but has declared readiness to do so, saying that the operation would continue until Gaza's arsenal was destroyed and quiet restored to the citizens of Israel. A ground incursion would be aimed at searching from house to house to locate the rocket depots and the underground launchers, and would provide Israeli forces with updated information via interrogation of prisoners – but at the cost of human life.

Netanyahu has said that a cease-fire is not on the agenda, but there are some indications already that secret encounters with U.S., Egypt, Qatar and the UN to broker an end to hostilities are in place behind the scenes. The Palestinian Authority, meanwhile, has drafted a United Nations resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire, but as the wording mentions only Israeli hostilities, and not Hamas rocket-fire, there is little chance the U.S. will approve.

With no end to Hamas' barrage of rockets and Israel's aerial operation, a ground incursion seems inevitable. One can only hope that the Israeli government has learned its lessons from the failures in Lebanon and in the 2009 Gaza war, and acts swiftly in the next infantry campaign to minimize the loss of both Palestinian and Israeli lives.

Israelis and Palestinians have forgotten how this war began

The Israel Air Force has attacked more than 500 targets in the Gaza Strip in the last 48 hours, a trade of barbs with the near equal number of rockets fired at Israel, 30 of them long range to Tel Aviv northward, since the operation began.

As Palestinians and Israelis take cover on either side of the Gaza border, it seems both have forgotten why this war started in the first place.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tiptoed into this operation last week carefully and hesitatingly, knowing neither side was interested in an escalation. Netanyahu knew that an all-out war would end not only in bloodshed, but in further international isolation for Israel.

When his foreign minister and faction partner Avigdor Lieberman publicly split with him over their policy in Gaza, Netanyahu was forced into action: a ruthless aerial campaign over the Strip to prove Israel's steadfastness in responding to rocket fire. This was a reality even right-wing Netanyahu wanted to avoid, but the barrage of rockets and the political pressure left him little choice.

As the operation enters its third day, Netanyahu is helpless to the fact that a ground incursion may be next on the agenda. This is certainly Hamas' aspiration, seen by its naval incursion Tuesday and subsequent failed attempt on Wednesday.

A ground incursion would mean fewer losses for Gaza, as the battles pinpoint on its own territory where it can fight with more control using weapons it has en masse that are easier to attain than the long-range missiles no longer readily available from its former benefactors in Iran. This would also give it a chance to wipe out Israeli forces in a way impossible under aerial strike – Hamas has already fired anti-aircraft missiles at Israeli jets, but its arsenal is limited and cannot be wasted for that effort.

Netanyahu said at the outset that neither Israel nor Hamas wanted escalation. The fragile Palestinian unity pact served for both as a deterrent. Hamas is weaker than ever, abandoned by Syria and Iran, and humiliated by Egypt, which has outlawed its allied Muslim Brotherhood and acted brutally to destroy the smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Sinai. Hamas' call to the Palestinian Authority was desperate, a last-ditch attempt to hover above water and maintain political and military legitimacy while hobbling on its last leg.

Israel recognized this weakness and sought to prevent reconciliation, in order to keep Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority clean and willing to concede to the conditions neither side managed to agree on in the exhausting nine months of failed peace negotiations.

Egypt's efforts to stymie Hamas' terrorist activities have been even significantly harsher than Israel's: it has repeatedly flooded its tunnels with sewage and destroyed hundreds of homes in the vicinity, damming not only Hamas' military capabilities but also its economic income, swallowing the profits that the Islamic organization has made over the years in illegal imports and taxation.

In the recent escalation, Hamas has suffered more losses in terms of strikes and casualties than Israel – hundreds of aerial attacks and more than two dozen killed – but has scored a victory with its surprise launching of at least three M-302 missiles, the longest-range projectiles in its cache, capable of reaching 200 km when lightly loaded and 150 km with a significant amount of warheads (145 kg). Its accuracy rate is within one kilometer, like its mid-range counterpart, the M-75 (similar to the Iranian Fajr). With just around 50 of these M-302s left in its arsenal, Hamas cannot afford to fire them at Israel with abandon.

These long-range missiles have already hit near Haifa's power station, and in Hadera – near the country's main power plant, and the only Israeli city to have absorbed missile attacks from both Gaza and from Lebanon in 2006. Hamas has also fired its mid-range missiles at Dimona, a mere few kilometers from Israel's nuclear reactor.

Its attacks are not indiscriminate: less targeted perhaps within Tel Aviv, to scare the public with albeit marginally inaccurate launches, but precise in attempt to demolish the infrastructure at energy and army bases. In addition to the few dozen M-302 remaining, there are a few hundred more M-75 mid-range projectiles in the Gaza cache, most in Hamas' cache and the rest overseen by the Islamic Jihad.

As the battle between Gaza and Israel escalates, the highways of Israel are now quiet, a far cry from the boiling Arab and Jewish riots over the kidnappings and deaths of the three Israeli and one Palestinian teens last week. Details of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir's murder, apparently at the hands of Jewish extremists, are still under gag order, but the anger and calls for revenge have subsided into oblivion. If nothing, the Gaza front has calmed the embers in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

One should remember, however, that these were the embers that sparked the Gaza escalation. Without the rockets and the aerial strikes, media discourse and public outrage would still be focused on sectarian divides and a third intifada, and a demand to hunt the perpetrators of all four teenaged deaths, who have still not been verified or tried – and in the case of the West Bank kidnapping, have not even been found.

The cost of civilian life ranks high on Netanyahu's agenda, following the lessons of the previous Gaza wars in 2012 and 2009, and especially in Lebanon in 2006; less so in Gaza, where Hamas has stored caches of long-range missiles under civilian buildings, inviting Israeli strikes. Hamas has little to lose these days; its political, military and economic stability is at stake and it will not survive without the reinstated support of Iran or Syria, or alternately, a strong Palestinian Authority that recognizes it demands and bounds.

Fears of a Jewish-Arab backlash within the bounds of recognized Israel have been put on the back-burner for now, as have the prospects of renewed peace negotiations, while Israel and Gaza focus on the next mission at hand: destroying the other's resolve and securing international support.

Expected but not surprised: Hamas hits Tel Aviv

Israel's mostly complacent public in the center of the country is at war again, but is likely to forget this by the time the next cease-fire is declared within a few days or at worst, weeks. For most Israelis, the threat from the south –as the fronts on the east and the north - is a mere inconvenience, and proof that peace with the Palestinians is impossible.

Hamas to them is an illegitimate anti-Israeli entity whose revenge can be harsh, but only brief, while the recognized Palestinian Authority is the force that must be reckoned and reasoned with, though there too, most Israelis – despite the overwhelming number in favor of a two-state solution - see no partner, regardless of its overtures. This war is to the Israeli public another brief disturbance and another nail in the coffin of the peace process.
War in Israel since the second intifada, for most of the country's secular and moderately religious society, is a passing affair: while the south sustains massive hits on a daily and weekly basis, as East Jerusalem and the West Bank burn and Gaza is ruthlessly attacked, residents in the center of the country run fearfully with the spontaneous sirens and return to normalcy just as quickly. The same is true of the south, but the rate and frequency with which they are attacked has forced them into a more sober reality.

This month's conflict was spurred in the West Bank, with the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teens, and the subsequent revenge attack of a Palestinian of the same age. These events, which broiled the extreme right-wing in Jerusalem and the parts of West Bank, have taken a back burner now that Gaza has returned to the map.

As the rocket barrages burst into the center of Israel on Tuesday, an inconclusive five-star and star-studded affair with war on its agenda took place: Haaretz's acclaimed Israel's Conference on Peace. And there were even fireworks to punctuate the event.

Dozens of rockets were fired at Israel over the course of the evening – one over Tel Aviv in early evening and at least seven more in the center of the country after dark, including four identified in Jerusalem and a siren near the main power plant in Caesarea for the first time since the 2006 war in Lebanon - each met with slight alarm from residents and a quick return to business as usual. The southern city of Ashdod, once an anomaly and now a regular target, sustained multiple direct hits as well.

As Israel's leading politicians and security experts – Tzipi Livni, Yuval Diskin, Shimon Peres and more - rubbed elbows with its leftist elite and journalists at the conference in Tel Aviv, jihadists in the Gaza Strip took the opportunity to fire at the country's commercial and population center, intercepted just south of the city by the Iron Dome defense system. Participants of the peace conference learned of the sirens minutes later, and crowded the basement lobby to reassure friends and family that they were okay, and oh, how ironic.

As these center communities panicked, unused to rockets like their southern neighbors are,the Israel Air Force continued its attacks on militants in the Gaza Strip, killing at least nine throughout the day.

A short hour after the first Tel Aviv siren and before the nighttime barrage, Barack Obama's special assistant on the Middle East wrapped up Haaretz's peace conference calling on Israel to defend itself but to act responsibly, recalling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's own urging the evening before.
This call by Netanyahu was made Sunday night, just hours before Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman took his Yisrael Beiteinu faction out of its alliance with Likud - a clear prompt tothe prime minister to rethink his strategy and political support, and order the IDF to prepare for a ground incursion - a move he had adamantly tried to prevent, and which he agreed to in the wake of the political splint.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the four rockets fired at Jerusalem and the two at Tel Aviv on Tuesday night, declaring them M 75 missiles, the Islamist organization's greatest weapon so far. An M 75 missile is designed to reach that many kilometers when loaded with the strongest amount of explosives (40kg) it can handle, but can go as far as 90-100 km if packed lighter. A more powerful rocket was launched later that night against Hadera, less than two kilometers from Israel's main power plant. This is M-302, originally a Chinese artillery rocket modified and upgraded by Syria sold to Iran and smuggled to Gaza. It weighs 600kg with a war head of up to 175 though unguided and inaccurate it can reach up to 200km.

Israel estimates that around 400 of these missiles existed in the Gaza arsenal, split between Hamas and the Islamic Jihad before the night's barrage: a dozen were fired over the course of Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, most of them either intercepted by the Iron Dome or left to hit open spaces. It is clear that without Iran's funding and supplies, the Islamist organization does not have a sufficient number in its cache to fire these treasures at an indiscriminate rate. With its limited supply, neither Hamas nor other militants will part quickly with these missiles. It is using these weapons as sparingly as possible.

The situation in Israel today - kidnappings, murders, and rockets rampant -is reminiscent of both October 2000, the critical moments before the second intifada, and November 2012, when Tel Aviv residents peeked out from their bubble for the first time since the intifada and realized that enemy missiles could reach their neighborhoods and force them to rethink just how relaxed to be in the midst of war on the southern front. For Tel Aviv and Haifa residents, scurrying from such far-range explosives-loaded missiles is a far-gone memory, last seen in 1991 during the Gulf War.

Hamas and its militant compatriots – jihadists which negate its rule - in the Gaza Strip know that 32 percent of the population in Jerusalem, mostly in its east and north, are Muslim. It has and will continue to aim its weapons away from this divisive community, focusing the large rockets on the Judean hills where the main Israel Defense Forces base in the region is located. Its attacks on Tel Aviv are far more indiscriminate: the residential center of this main city is as fair a target as a school in its north or a club in its south.

Israelis will continue to balk at the sound of the sirens and return to agenda immediately, as the south takes the real hits. Tel Aviv is not Sderot. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad have a limited arsenal they are unlikely to waste in a single night, and a truce between the sides is likely to be achieved before any real damage on the Israeli center can be achieved.

Israelis should be alert now, but not alarmed. They know now where to run in case of missiles – their municipalities have been told to prepare – and they know to heed the advice of local experts. They also know that just as Israel wants to avoid escalation, so does Hamas does not want an escalation – it has more to lose than Israel.

The recent days' attacks are a threat in response to threat, a mutual trade between Gaza and Israel. The Palestinian unity pact is on fragile hold and thus Hamas' security and support is waning. Both Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recognize the hubris in this latest round of war games, and Hamas on its end is well aware too.

The Gaza front opened as Israel and the Palestinian Authority were engaged in solving the crisis of the four kidnapped teens'; From the start, Netanyahu's aim was to prove to Abbas that Hamas is indeed a terrorist group unworthy of a unity pact. In this sense, he has won – Abbas cannot sanctify his unity with Hamas as long as the rockets continue. And the Israeli public will continue to refuse its ever possibility – and thus a chance of an inclusive peace agreement with the two Palestinian territories - as long as the attacks continue on both fronts.

The cycle of violence and revenge continue.

Israel's fear of abandoning Jewish morality will backfire

Four days after a Palestinian teenager was kidnapped outside of an East Jerusalem mosque and burned alive in a forest nearby, the Shin Bet revealed partial details of its investigation: Six Israeli Jews believed to belong to an ad-hoc extremist group have been arrested.

A cloud of secrecy has hovered over the police investigation, but suspicions that Jewish rightists were behind the murder was clear from the start, in both the Israeli and Palestinian public. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself condemned the murder immediately after on the basis of it having been the act of Jewish extremists, even as a strict gag order kept the details of the probe undercover.

Rumors began flying as the police kept mum that 16-year-old Mohammed Abu-Khdeir was killed by members of his own family over unsubstantiated claims that he was a homosexual, or by a rival clan for some yet-to-be-determined settling of debts. The teenager's family insisted that this was not an honor killing and that their son was a good student with no enemies. The false claims continued to circulate, with the Israeli right-wing eager to prove to themselves and to others that Jews could not be behind such a heinous crime.

There was little doubt that this was the work of Jewish terrorists. The abduction was carried out less than 12 hours after the three Israeli teenagers abducted and murdered three weeks before were laid to rest and amidst rampant demonstrations of Israeli Jews in Jerusalem calling for blood and death to the Arabs.

The gag order was sealed again Sunday just hours after the initial details of the investigation were revealed, at the behest of the Shin Bet, which is holding the Jewish suspects in custody. One small piece of information managed to filter through before the file was removed from public information, however: that the same six suspects were linked to the abduction attempt of a 9-year-old boy in the same East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shoafat just a day before Abu Kheidar's kidnap and grisly murder.

Netanyahu again condemned the murder, in his first press conference in more than two years. "Israel does not differentiate between terror," Netanyahu said, vowing to crack down on Jewish extremists with the same vigorousness Israel uses against Palestinians. "As I condemn the calls of death to Arabs, I condemn calls of death to Jews." In the same breath, he followed by declaring that what differentiates Israel from its neighbors is that the latter welcomes murderers and terrorists and names streets and squares after them.

Netanyahu's weakened condemnation, to play into the Israeli sentiment that Jews could not be responsible for such an act, were followed by a harsher and more surprising remark by his right-wing Economy Minister, Naftali Bennett, who proposed subjecting Jewish terrorists to the same legal retributions accorded to Palestinians convicted of security offenses.

The prime minister's quick clarification of Jews' moral superiority will do little to douse the flames engulfing Israel, nor will the gag order reinstated on the investigation, leaving open conspiracy theories and unsettled suspicions.



Arab rioters have taken to the streets of Israel, from Wadi Ara to the highways leading to wealthy suburbs in both north and south, hurling firebombs and stones, and lighting tires aflame. Israel's highways are beginning to look like the West Bank or East Jerusalem. The riots subsided briefly on Sunday morning and resumed at full force on Sunday evening, following news of the arrest. Police were forced to shut down major thoroughfares over the course of the demonstration, as the rioters targeted cars entering the Jewish neighborhoods. Nearly 200 demonstrators were arrested in a single day of clashes.

Jewish claims to moral superiority must not be taken at face value. Extremists are capable of and have carried out far more extensive massacres over the course of Israel's recent history. Baruch Goldstein's murder of 29 Palestinians in Hebron is the most well-known of these attacks, but many other examples exist: the Bat Ayin underground's plan to wipe out a Palestinian girls' school, deserted soldier Eden Natan-Zada's murder of four innocent Arab passengers on a bus in Shfaram, contractor Asher Weisgan's targeted shootout of four of his Palestinian workers, the arson of a home in Sinjil which trapped and killed an entire Palestinian family.

The Israeli Arab demonstrations and concurrent clashes with police have drawn the war between Jews and Arab across the Green Line, into the affluent suburbs of secular Israel. Their riots were preceded by a venomous popular campaign among right-wing Israelis – not even those considered extreme - calling for bloody revenge over the murder of the three Israeli teens. What will stop these Jewish revenge-seekers from countering their Arab counterparts in Israel in a bloody face-off?

Those who are capable of burning a teenager alive are capable of taking up arms against their enemy masses in the Israeli Arab sector. The Israeli government, however, is not capable of issuing a firm declaration without forgiving society for its Jewish morality in comparison with its neighbors and the "lone" extremists responsible for these attacks.

Unless Netanyahu acts on his pledge of cracking down on the right-wing violence, his claims of Jewish superiority will backfire and leave Israel not only in further isolation but in a bloody sectarian war.

Israel should take West Bank kidnapping as chance for peace, not war

Police evacuating Arabs from riots in Jerusalem / Olivier Fittousi, Haaretz

Soon after the three kidnapped teens were laid to rest side-by-side in an emotional funeral attended by tens of thousands of mourners, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet of senior ministers convened for the second time in 24 hours to determine its response to the attack and to the barrage of rockets that have been lobbied at southern Israel in the weeks that followed.

Just a few kilometers away, in the center of Jerusalem, dozens of right-wing Israelis gathered not for a vigil, but to cast their anger and frustration on any Palestinian they could find. They rampaged through the streets shouting racist slogans, hurling rocks and firing pepper spray, demanding "revenge" and death to the Arabs.

Five Palestinians were wounded and some 50 rioters were detained. The mob on Tuesday night carried the spirit of their comrades who chose a similar course of action the evening before, when it emerged that security forces has found the boys' bodies, 19 days after they were whisked away from a hitchhiking stand in the West Bank.

Before the meeting, Netanyahu and his defense minister, Moshe Ya'alon, lay out to the public the three tasks facing Israel's defense establishment: first, to find the abductors and all accomplices; second to destroy Hamas' infrastructure and membership in the West Bank; and third, "to expand the operation as far as required" to wipe out the military capabilities of the ruling Islamist organization in the Gaza Strip.

"We will not rest and we will not relax until we have reached every last one of them. It doesn't matter where they try to hide. We will reach them all," Netanyahu said.

Despite Netanyahu's harsh words, the cabinet is torn on how to respond, particularly on whether to turn its energies also on Gaza rather than just focusing its search on Hamas in the West Bank. The majority in cabinet fears that a violent circle will result in an all-out war, which both sides are eager to avoid.

Israel has struck Gaza targets by the dozens in the last few weeks, in response to the near hundred rockets fired at Israel, with the goal of reaching Hamas' operational ranks in the coastal territory.

Hamas is used to these reprisals, however, and most of its senior commanders have already taken refuge underground. The only exposed targets at this point are the low-level militants doing the footwork in Gaza and the weapons warehouses they man.

Ya'alon, for his part, while showing caution on the military front, is keeping up his image as a shoot-from-the-hip right-wing politician, proposing that a new settlement be created in response to the kidnapping in memory of the three teens. His suggestion is no less provocative than the activities of the vigilante rightists roaming the streets of Jerusalem seeking revenge with their eyes closed.

In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority is considering its next move just as carefully. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held out an olive branch in vulnerable hands three weeks ago when he told a forum of Arab foreign ministers, in their native language at a summit in Jeddah, that he condemned the kidnapping and resolved to find the perpetrators.

Abbas plans to approach the international community in a plea to halt Israeli military moves, fearing the domino effect it will create: a popular uprising, a third intifada, and a renewal of unrest in the West Bank that hasn't been felt in nearly a decade.

Hundreds of homes have been overturned and nearly 500 Palestinians have been arrested since Israel embarked on its operation to find the boys and their kidnappers. Palestinians will not tolerate the overnight raids and incursions much longer; the majority, unaffiliated with Hamas, wants to live in a state of stability, to escape the sense of occupation, without fear for family, property and peace of mind.

The defense establishment must focus on pinpointing the terrorists and their accomplices, but need not turn the West Bank upside down in its search – and most certainly should not open a wide-scale operation in the Gaza Strip. Such a move will only escalate enmity on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides.

More air strikes on Gaza will be met with multiple rocket barrages on the south; extensive raids in the West Bank will find its match with a populist response from angry young Palestinians; that uprising will spur further violence from the right-wing Israeli extremists. And so forth and so forth. There will be no end to the cycle.

The deadline for renewing peace talks expired in late April, but such dates are flexible; Israel and the Palestinians have been going at this process for 21 years. Israel should take the opportunity to see Abbas and his Palestinian Authority as a partner for peace, and together form a true partnership to wipe out the extremism within both Israel and the West Bank.

Israel is intent on destroying Abbas' unity agreement with Hamas. Attacking the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will only strengthen their fraternity. Israel now has the chance to fortify a bond with Abbas that will ensure security on both sides of the Jordan River, for the Israelis and the Palestinians on each side. Abbas has shown he is ready. Netanyahu must do the same.