Published: 16 May 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
After five days of fighting and with 35 people dead, the status quo has returned until the inevitable next round of violence.
Israel’s latest incursion into Gaza ended on Saturday evening after Palestinian militant groups agreed to a ceasefire.
Israel reopened border crossings into the Gaza Strip for the entry of fuel and other goods on Sunday, after as the Strip's sole electricity provider warned of a looming humanitarian disaster from a fuel shortage.
‘Operation Shield and Arrow’ began with the simultaneous assassination of three senior Islamic Jihad commanders early last Tuesday but continued until Saturday night with hundreds of rockets fired into Israel and continuing Israeli attacks on Islamic Jihad targets.
In Gaza, 33 people were killed, including six children and three women, and 147 injured, according to figures from the Palestinian Health Ministry.
In Israel, two people in Israel were killed by rockets — an elderly Israeli woman in Rehovot and a Palestinian worker from Gaza at a construction site near the border. Eight Israelis were wounded in the Rehovot strike.
No one believes the ceasefire will hold for long.
“Israel has now launched 15 operations in Gaza since the Disengagement. That’s one every 14 months, on average. That’s 15 officially announced operations, usually lasting at least a few days – not the sporadic exchanges of rocket launches and airstrikes, of which there have been countless dozens,” wrote Anshel Pfeffer in Haaretz.
Commentators agree that neither Israeli governments nor Hamas, which controls Gaza, have an incentive to end the cycle of violence.
“One key reason for the lack of urgency in solving the Gaza problem is that it has become increasingly convenient, in some cases even advantageous, for the main players to go through the routine of having these periodic outbursts of violence and then getting back to business without sacrificing any political capital,” wrote Pfeffer.
