“Yesterday was one of the calmest days, perhaps, since March 30,” Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said on July 22 as he toured the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Gaza after yet another tense weekend. If the calm is preserved, Liberman promised, Israel would reopen the crossing on July 24 and restore the transfer of goods and raw material into the Strip. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the crossing closed two weeks ago in response to the wave of arson kites and balloons into Israel that have laid waste to extensive border areas. “The key to all this is quiet, calm, zero incendiary balloons, zero clashes on the fence and zero rockets or, heaven forbid, gunfire,” Liberman warned. He was referring to a promise Hamas conveyed to Israel through Egyptian mediators after Israel’s massive punitive July 20 airstrikes on Gaza in response to the killing of Israeli soldier Aviv Levi by Palestinian snipers.
There is no record in memory of such an urgent, unconditional Hamas cease-fire offer without preconditions. Hamas committed to stop Palestinian protest demonstrations along the Gaza fence and the ongoing kite and balloon arson campaign. In fact, events over the weekend once again reflected how Hamas leadership miscalculated the limits of its power. Deploying snipers in the highly charged border area and killing an Israeli soldier for the first time since the 2014 Israel-Gaza war instantly set back all of the movement’s achievements of recent months.
