It Didn't Take Long

It took roughly five days, but the Palestinian terrorists couldn't help themselves firing mortars at Israel this morning. Two kassams were also fired. That's despite the fact that Israel has begun loosening restrictions on humanitarian aid and other steps as it agreed.

I'd say that this truce is dead and Israel should resume its operations against the terrorists along with a retightening of its restrictions on aid and items entering Gaza.

If Israel lets these incidents slide, the Palestinians will rightfully conclude that they can continue to fire on Israel at will without facing repercussions.

The terrorists will deny and evade responsibility for breaking the ceasefire, and will whine and seethe should Israel retaliate against those terrorists for attacking Israel. They will claim that it was Israel who broke the ceasefire, not them, even as there's irrefutable proof that the Palestinians broke it.

The terrorists might even point to an IDF operation that killed an Islamic Jihad terrorist as proof that Israel broke the truce. Never forget for one moment that the Palestinians have not given up on the idea of destroying Israel or attacking it at the earliest possible moment. They have simply engaged in a hudna to buy time and space to regroup and rearm.

Egypt continues to play mediator in the ongoing negotiations, and they are now saying that they will not reopen Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza unless Gilad Shalit is returned. Interesting. I doubt that it will present sufficient pressure on Hamas to return Shalit.

UPDATE:
Well, it also didn't take long for the media to twist and contort itself into knots over who was responsible for the breach of the truce.

You've got a couple of different ways that this happened. One is that instead of reporting that the mortars and rockets slammed into Israel, the media outlets state instead that Israel reports or claims that the rockets hit the country, as though there's some question as to whether it actually happened.

For its part, Israel is not going to deal with the breaches of the truce, which will only embolden the terrorists to carry out more attacks. Restraint is once again confused with weakness, and the terrorists see weakness as something to exploit. With a media that looks the other way, it is a time-tested approach that has worked well. Israel looks like the bad guy when they respond to terrorists or intercept terrorists before they carry out attacks, instead of the beleaguered nation beset on its borders by terrorist groups intent upon its destruction.

Islamic Jihad says that they fired the rockets at Israel in response to a raid that killed one of its terrorists hours earlier. Islamic Jihad isn't part to the hudna, but they can't operate in Gaza without Hamas knowing. They're playing a shell game - using live shells to try and kill Israelis.