After months of relative quiet, the Gaza Strip is back on escalation track. Salah Abu Latif was killed two weeks ago on Dec. 24; the Rahat resident and employee of the Ministry of Defense was fixing the fence that runs along the Gaza border when he was shot and killed. Since then, the war of attrition in the region has been renewed. Armed Palestinians fire mortars and rockets at Israel, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) respond with aerial assaults at the sources of the attacks, or at various Hamas targets.
Last week alone, the Israeli air force attacked the Gaza Strip on seven separate occasions, wounding eight Palestinians. After one of these attacks, the IDF released a statement saying, “The Hamas terrorist organization is the right address, and it bears responsibility.” The gradual but steady escalation stands in stark contradiction to all of the assessments by key figures in Israel’s security establishment, which claims that Hamas is too weak and too isolated at this time, and will therefore do everything it can to avoid another round of military clashes with Israel.
