As dusk closed in on Tuesday evening, the IDF began dismantling roadblocks it had set up just a day earlier around Gaza’s borders.
They had been there to keep civilians out of areas that may have been shelled by Palestinian militias, if matters had escalated. But they did not.
From three in the morning, a tense calm had returned to the region. For 22 hours the rockets had flown from Gaza and Israel carried out air-strikes. But neither side wanted to escalate and the climbdown was swift and orderly.
By the time Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who had cut short his visit to the United States had landed — it was over.
The IDF kept briefing the media of reinforcements due to arrive in the south, but it was mainly for show. Most of the units arriving at the Gaza Division had been scheduled to be stationed there soon, as part of the routine rotation.
The situation remains tense but that is normal. The only thing that changed from the last round of escalation, which took place barely two weeks before, is that this time Israel is not accepting the narrative Hamas has used twice recently — that the rocket which destroyed the home of the Wolf family in the moshav of Mishmeret had been fired “by mistake.”
It is not totally implausible. Hamas’s locally-manufactured rockets are ready on makeshift launchpads, aimed at Israeli cities. Maintenance is shoddy and quality control is not a factor in their manufacture. Lightning or even an inadvertent spark could cause them to lift off.
Regardless, the Israeli narrative is now that it does not matter whether the firing was intentional or not; Hamas will be held accountable.
But the reckoning with Hamas has not changed. For the last four-and-a-half years since the end of Operation Protective Edge, with few exceptions, Israel has waited for Hamas to empty its headquarters and bases before a retaliation.
The IDF now unofficially calls these “real estate attacks”: no casualties, and the only thing that distinguishes them is the importance of the Hamas commanders who used them. This time it was the offices of Hamas’s intelligence branch and that of its prime minister Ismail Haniyeh that were targeted.
Everything happening now in Israel is connected to the election and it is obvious that the last thing Mr Netanyahu wants is to have a little war in Gaza just before the election.
But even if the election were far off, wars are not in his nature. Despite the warmongering image that so many have of him, the former special forces officer has never been a fan of using the IDF’s large armoured divisions as an instrument of policy.
He much prefers pinpoint air strikes and secret commando missions. Of all the ministers in his cabinet in the summer of 2014, he was the most reluctant to send the IDF in to Gaza.
The Netanyahu doctrine is deterrence, not war.
