On the 21^st day of the fighting in Gaza, it seems as if the IDF has run through its “target bank” for this stage of the war.

The discovery and destruction of the maze of tunnels that Hamas dug along the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel is near completion. Hamas activists and the other militant groups in Gaza are still firing rockets at Israel’s civilian population from densely populated centers in Gaza, but the total destruction of their ability to fire rockets at civilian centers in the heart of Israel has yet to be defined as part of the military objectives set for this operation.

In the early days of the fighting, the international community displayed unprecedented tolerance for Israel’s military campaign against Hamas forces in Gaza. Apart from several scathing speeches by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the diplomatic hourglass, as we call it here, had been turned over again and again.

By way of comparison, the fighting during Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012 ended after just eight days. On the seventh day of the fighting, then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Israel after several days of intense telephone diplomacy, not only with Israel, but also with Turkey, Qatar and Egypt.