Gazan terror factions led by Hamas ended their rocket and mortar attacks on the
Negev on Thursday, following reports of an Egyptian-mediated
cease-fire.
Attacks stopped shortly before midnight, though the calm was
broken once by a Palestinian mortar shell that exploded in the Eshkol region at
9:30 a.m.
Between that attack and Thursday evening, no mortars or rockets
targeted the South.
Officials said that there have been no negotiations
with Hamas, but that a message was sent saying that an end to rocket attacks
would result in an end to Israeli air strikes.
“Exacting a cost from
Hamas forms the basis for Israeli deterrence,” Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe
Ya’alon said in Tel Aviv on Thursday, according to Channel 10. The minister
added that if the country did not have deterrence, rocket attacks would be a daily occurrence.
“The
Gaza Strip is a complex situation,” Ya’alon told a conference of the Commercial
and Industrial Club. “We provide them with electricity, which they use to create
rockets and fire them at us. We provide them with water and energy, which they
use against us.”
Ya’alon called for Gaza to desalinate its own water,
produce its own energy and link its infrastructures to Egypt.
“Then the
situation would be clearer,” he said.
Iran is the main cause of
instability in the Middle East, Ya’alon said.