TEL AVIV, Israel — Since the beginning of the year, Israel, under the direction of Defense Minister Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon, has pushed the envelope of understandings reached through Egyptian mediation that produced one of the more durable cease-fires in the aftermath of "Pillar of Cloud" in the waning days of 2012.

Ya'alon’s toolbox apparently includes a revived policy of targeted assassination. This time, the focus is not prominent Hamas leaders like Ahmad Jabari, whose assassination in November 2012 sparked the opening of Israel’s “Pillar of Cloud” attack, but less prominent jihadist "rebels" who answer to no one.

Israel claims that such hits against Palestinian targets in Gaza, including three members of Islamic Jihad who were killed March 11 in an airstrike after firing mortar shells at Israeli troops, are legitimate actions taken within the scheme of understandings reached in late 2012, and which have kept an uneasy but relatively successful cease-fire.

Wednesday’s rocket fire into Israel by Islamic Jihad in response to the killings marks the heaviest barrage of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip since the 2012 agreement. But the tit-for-tat attacks exhausted themselves by Thursday, March 13.