On Thursday, March 13, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a special meeting of the diplomatic-security cabinet at the headquarters of the Defense ministry — the nerve center of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and its intelligence services in Tel Aviv.

Such cabinet meetings in Israel often take place under a pall of secrecy and usually go unreported. This time, however, an official statement about the meeting was released. The purpose was to ratchet up pressure on Gaza-based Islamic Jihad leaders, who, just a day earlier, had fired a salvo of dozens of rockets at Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip and in the Negev region, thus embarking on another round of violence against the IDF and the Israeli Air Force (IAF).

Israel’s cabinet meetings automatically heighten the alert in the region, given that they are expected to authorize large-scale IDF operations and mobilization of reserves, etc.

Some 30 to 40 people huddled inside the cabinet’s conference room. Netanyahu, flanked by cabinet ministers and their assistants, chaired the meeting. Sitting around the table were the heads of Israel’s security agencies as well as other high-ranking officers, among them Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot (Chief of Staff Benny Gantz was on a working visit abroad). Others included Mossad director Tamir Pardo, Shin Bet director Yoram Cohen as well as senior officers from military intelligence, the operations directorate, other security agencies and, of course, representatives from the air force and the Southern Command.