Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that it was "clear that this is not the end of the campaign," hours after a ceasefire to end a surge of deadly violence in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel took hold on Monday.
The latest round of hostilities erupted three days ago, peaking on Sunday when rockets and missiles from Hamas Islamist-run Gaza killed four civilians in Israel, local health officials said. Israeli strikes killed 21 Palestinians, over half of them civilians, at the weekend, Gaza health authorities said.
"Over the last two days we renewed the policy of targeted killings of terror leaders, we killed tens of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists, we destroyed terror towers. We changed the rules of the game and Hamas understands that well," Netanyahu said, flanked by senior military officials.
Netanyahu said that the temporary nature of the truce would be made abundantly clear because of the troop increase along the Gaza border. "I ordered preparations for continuation [of the campaign] and I ordered to keep armored and artillery forces deployed around the Gaza Strip."
The Israel Defense Forces said that more than 600 rockets and other projectiles had been fired at southern Israeli cities and villages since Friday. It said it shelled or carried out air strikes on some 320 terrorist sites.
The violence abated before dawn, after Palestinian officials said Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations had mediated a truce and just as Gazans were preparing to begin the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
In the wake of the recent flare-up, some in Israel have laid blame on Iran for trying to use the Israeli-Palestinian theater as a means of bolstering its regional standing.
Suffering under renewed U.S. sanctions and Israeli strikes against its military assets in Syria, Iran may have seen stoking Palestinian violence as a way of telling Israel, "we will get back at you through PIJ and Gaza", Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz told the Israeli radio station 90 FM.
