The fact that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired some 300 rockets toward Israel even as their senior leadership convenes in Cairo for talks shows that this latest escalation premeditated. It began with the trickling of rockets early last week, followed by incendiary airborne devices, provocations along the Gaza Strip fence, and then the latest barrage.
As Hamas prepares for the holy month of Ramadan, which begins this week, it would like to extract more concessions from Israel and present them to Gazans a victory vis-à-vis Israel. Its chief goal is to make Israel transfer more cash from Qatar so that it can pay its employees running the Gaza Strip.
Senior Hamas military leader Yahya Sinwar, unlike Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh, knows how to read Israeli society, having spent decades locked up in an Israeli prison. He knows Israel will shy away from a full-fledged confrontation in the Gaza Strip just before Independence Day and the Eurovision Song Contest. That is why Sinwar took a calculated risk by telling his operatives to launch rockets on Israel even while he was away in Cairo.
It is still unclear how this latest escalation will end, but what is clear is that Israel's killing of two Hamas operatives on Friday after two Israeli troops were shot on the Gaza fence, was not the trigger for the massive rocket barrage.
