All the living hostages are home. Israel and Hamas are, for the most part, not exchanging fire. The ceasefire there is holding.
But quiet can be deceptive.
Israel has withdrawn from roughly 47% of the Gaza Strip to what is now known as the Yellow Line. Already, there have been incidents along this line: Gazans approaching too closely, testing Israel’s response, and probing for weakness.
Only a small number of the 28 bodies of hostages still held by Hamas have been returned. This, too, seems like a test – a calculated move meant to test Israel’s patience, its vigilance, and its willingness to enforce the terms of the ceasefire.
These early days are critical. How Jerusalem responds to these infringements will set the tone for what follows – whether this fragile quiet evolves into a sustainable calm or unravels and leads to further war.
Both Defense Minister Israel Katz and IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir have made clear that Israel will not tolerate violations. “We will not let threats grow,” Zamir warned. “Our eyes are open, our fingers are on the trigger of the machine gun, of the tank, and of the fighter plane.”
Katz was equally blunt: “There will be an immediate response to every infringement of the agreement. Yesterday, terrorists were thwarted as they tried to cross the Yellow Line – and that will be the situation in the future as well.”
The message could not be clearer: Israel cannot, and will not – for the sake of the long-awaited quiet – turn a blind eye to Hamas provocations. Recent history has proven that the early days of ceasefires set the tone for what comes after. Every minor violation ignored becomes the precedent for the next and the next.
This pattern is painfully familiar. When Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, it pledged “full force for one rocket.” That pledge evaporated the moment it was put to the test. When Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon pledged a fierce response for every rocket fired. Israel did not follow up on those threats, either.
The result of failing to follow up with Hezbollah was its massive rearmament after the 2006 Second Lebanon War, and the result of the failure to act against Hamas when the terrorist organization fired thousands of rockets and turned Gaza into a heavily armed fortress was – ultimately – the October 7 massacre.
But Israel learned from October 7, and the way the IDF has responded to Hezbollah violations of the ceasefire agreement that brought the fighting in the north to an end in November is a case in point.
Within hours of that ceasefire taking effect, Hezbollah terrorists tried to return to abandoned villages near the border. Israel responded – not with warning shots, but with targeted ones. Katz ordered the army to act “decisively and uncompromisingly,” and the IDF did. That firmness continues to this day, nearly a year later.
Now that same approach, and the same iron will, must be applied to Gaza. However, enforcing the conditions of the ceasefire in Gaza – including Hamas’s disarmament and Gaza’s demilitarization – will be far more difficult than in Lebanon.
Making matters more difficult, under the agreement, the Gaza Strip will soon be full of international forces and advisers – Arab and Western – whose mandates and rules of engagement are still being drafted. Once they arrive, Israel will have to act with extraordinary care to avoid harming foreign personnel, even in self-defense.
Those forces are not yet on the ground – which means that now, before they arrive, is the moment for Israel to set the rules of the game. Once the multinational contingents deploy, every Israeli action will be second-guessed: Was a Turkish or Jordanian officer endangered? Was a UAE adviser nearby? Every strike will be scrutinized.
But in this transitional window, Israel still holds freedom of action. Now is the time to establish deterrence that will resonate later – to make clear to Hamas and its offshoots that any infringement will be met with immediate and decisive force. That window, however, will close quickly.
The greatest temptation now will be to preserve the quiet at any cost – to cling to it, come what may. After October 7, Israelis understandably yearn for normalcy, for life to return to what it was before the war. But the pre-October 7 quiet was based on an illusion, one of knowingly ignoring looming threats because of a sanctification of quiet – a quiet that enabled prosperity.
This time, quiet must not be an end in itself but something actively protected, even at the risk of disrupting it.
Each 'delay' from Hamas is a deliberate probe of IDF reactions
That is why how Israel responds now to violations near the Yellow Line, or the cynical games Hamas is playing with the bodies of the remaining hostages, is so important; it sets the tone. Each encroachment, each “accidental” approach by Hamas fighters, and each delay in returning hostage bodies is a deliberate probe. The IDF and the government cannot dismiss them as minor or localized misunderstandings.
Hamas is watching, measuring Israel’s response, and calibrating its next move. The guiding principle must be clear: no infringement goes unanswered. A swift and visible response to each violation is not escalation; it is prevention.
If Israel hesitates now, it will invite months – if not years – of slow erosion. Hamas’s pattern after every previous confrontation with the IDF has been the same: test, adapt, rebuild. Israel cannot allow that process to begin again. Both Zamir and Katz have pledged that Israel will not allow this to happen again. It is critical that they mean it.
One of the most painful truths of October 7 was not simply that Israel was caught completely off guard, but that it had seen Hamas build itself up to monstrous proportions and did not act.
The lesson, therefore, is not merely never again be surprised; it is never again ignore the early signs.
October 7 taught Israel that the cost of ignoring danger is far higher than the cost of confronting it early. The IDF’s mission now is to ensure that this lesson is not lost amid the calm – that it remains etched in Israel’s posture during the current ceasefire: firm, unblinking, and both ready and willing to respond forcefully to all provocations and violations of the agreement.