Tension on Israel's border with the Gaza Strip could grow worse, defense officials think.

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Hamas wants the situation to revert to what existed prior to Operation Guardian of the Walls in May, while Israel is unwilling to continue efforts to reach a long-term ceasefire without an agreement to return its missing fallen soldiers and civilians being held captive in Gaza. However, Israel is gradually allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza, with the condition that Hamas violence – in the form of rocket fire, arson balloons, or rioting on the border fence – will cause Israel to restrict the flow of goods and equipment into Gaza.

The Israeli defense establishment thinks that if the border protests and the arson balloon attacks continue, there will be no alternative to another military operation against Hamas targets in Gaza. Nevertheless, the defense apparatus would prefer to postpone that scenario until after the High Holidays, which begin on Monday, Sept. 6.

Hamas is exploiting this preference and threatening to step up violence on Rosh Hashanah, on the pretext that the latest disbursement of Qatari aid money has not been transferred. Palestinian officials recently claimed that Israel was obstructing the transfer of funds, leaving tens of thousands of families in need.

One senior official who spoke to Palestinian media outlets said that Hamas and the other armed factions in Gaza had agreed to continue sending arson balloons over the border fence, hoping to cause wildfires in the western Negev, and have their "night units" harass residents of western Negev communities.

On Saturday, Hamas launched over a dozen arson balloons into Israel.

Photos and videos posted online showed masked Hamas-affiliated terrorists holding pictures of Gazans killed in recent clashes with Israeli forces while they launched balloons in the direction of Israel.

There were no immediate reports of any fires in southern Israel. Israel's new government has compared the balloons, which have sparked a series of wildfires in recent weeks, to rocket fire. It often responds to the launches with nighttime airstrikes on Hamas targets.

Hamas has also staged a series of violent demonstrations along the Israeli border in recent weeks calling for an end to the Israeli-Egyptian blockade.

A Hamas spokesman said Saturday that the Gazan people were determined to "break the siege" and no longer accepted the two countries' "gradual easing" of the blockade.

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Terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip are considering stepping up provocations beyond sending arson balloons across the border fence into Israel, the Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam reported Wednesday.

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"Give the total breakdown in the negotiation efforts and Israel's lack of response to the conditions of resistance, and the lack of any visible future for the internal interests or removal of the blockade, the resistance is looking at the option of 'lighting up' the border, which will not be limited to sending arson balloons and similar methods, but will move to what happened on the Israel-Lebanon border, including the clashes between Hezbollah and Israel," a source said.

The unnamed source said that Israel had "turned its back on all the mediators, and started a series of steps to clamp down the blockade and fully retreat from recent decisions, as well as continually evading the issue of allowing Qatari money in [to Gaza]," the source continued.

The source said that Hamas' military apparatus had been tracking groups suspected of ties with Israel and attempts to cause internal war and terrorist actions inside the Gaza Strip, and claimed that the various terrorist factions in Gaza would be invited to a meeting so that the situation could be "studied," and a plan formed that would thwart the aforementioned plots.

According to the report, the terrorists' military branches had arrested a few members of these groups.

Meanwhile, Lebanon's Al-Akhbar newspaper reported that it learned that an Israeli delegation paid an urgent visit to Cairo at the start of this week in response to the arson balloon activity from Gaza, and that the Egyptians demanded that Hamas give Israel more time to discuss issues relating to Gaza.

According to Al-Akhbar, which is affiliated with Hezbollah, Israel and Hamas are still very far apart in their demands, especially given Israel's insistence on tying humanitarian assistance to Gaza to the return of its captive fallen soldiers and civilian prisoners.

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The Israeli Air Force struck several Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip on Saturday night in response to a wave of incendiary balloons launched by the terrorist organization into Israel a day earlier, causing several fires in the south.

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The IAF bombed a Hamas camp and a rocket-launching site, the IDF said in a statement, and emphasized that it would "continue to respond with strikes to any further terror attempts from Gaza."

On Friday, arson balloons launched from the strip sparked four brush fires in the south. The fires broke out in the Kissufim and Beeri forests, two nature reserves located near the Gaza border, officials said.

The attack came hours after escalation on the northern border after Hezbollah fired a barrage of rockets on the Jewish state.

Gaza balloon unit Ahfad An-Nassar claimed responsibility for the launches, saying it had attacked Israel "in solidarity" with Lebanon following retaliatory IAF airstrikes in Lebanon last week that came in response to sporadic rocket fire on northern Israel.

Earlier in the day, Hamas expressed "full support" for Hezbollah's attack on the "Zionist enemy," saying the Shiite terrorist group was "challenging Israel's attempts to impose its own rules of engagement."

Hezbollah took responsibility for launching rockets at Israeli territory on Friday, saying it was in response to Israeli airstrikes on open areas in the al-Jarmaq and al-Shawakir areas on Wednesday night.

i24NEWS contributed to this report.

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Maher Al-Akhras, 49, is now in an Israeli hospital suffering from heart pain and convulsions and has slipped occasionally into a coma, his wife said.

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A resident of Jenin, Akhras was taken into custody in July under an Israeli administrative detention order.

The Shin Bet security agency said Akhras had been detained after it received information that he was an operative with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. His wife has denied that allegation.

Three weeks ago, Akhras was moved to Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot, where he has been drinking water but refusing solid food, according to his family.

At the hospital, Akhras's wife, Taghreed, told Reuters that he would continue the hunger strike for his immediate release despite a decision on Monday by the Supreme Court not to extend his four-month detention term beyond Nov. 26.

"The responsibility for what happens next lies with those who can prevent his further deterioration and even death," Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, which is monitoring the case, said in a statement.

"They can still stop this from happening."

Taghreed al-Akhras said her husband, too weak to leave his bed, was not handcuffed in the hospital, and there were no guards visible near his room.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights called on international rights groups to intervene immediately to "save the life of Akhras before it is too late."

In Gaza, terrorists linked to Islamic Jihad announced they had resumed launching incendiary balloons into Israel. A poster with Akhras's picture and the words "our patience is running out" were attached.

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The incident marked the first fire in the area to be caused by an arson balloon from Gaza after a respite of about a month from attacks of this kind.

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Last month, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi and GOC Southern Command Maj. Gen. Herzi Halevi met with heads of local authorities near Gaza. During the meeting, Kochavi said that the IDF was using every tool at its disposal to put a stop to arson terrorism from the Gaza Strip. Kochavi also briefed the local authority heads on the situation in Gaza, as well as provided an overview of the terrorist organizations which are active there.

The meeting touched on common goals and discussed continued cooperation between the IDF and communities that lie to the east of Gaza.

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In the past few months, fires caused by explosives floated over the border fence have consumed some 450 (111 acres) of fields and forested land.

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Wednesday saw fires in the Shaar Hanegev and Eshkol regions, including ones that broke out near a sports center in the Eshkol Regional Council and in the yard of a home in Eshkol. No injuries were reported and no damage was caused. Wildfires erupted in the Be'eri forest and the Besor Nature Reserve, among other locations.

The number of fires on Wednesday marks a sharp uptick from the beginning of the week. On Monday, arson balloons caused eight separate fires in the space of an hour.

The security coordinator for one of the afflicted communities in the western Negev said Monday that ongoing security work was being "pushed aside because the balloon terrorism has become a major issue in the day-to-day lives of the residents of [these] communities. The ones who pay the heaviest price are the farmers, who see months of labor go up in flames in moments. Massive damage is also being caused to the fields [themselves] and the crops, as well as to agricultural equipment," he said.

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Explosives-laden balloons floated over the Israel-Gaza border sparked eight wildfires in the space of an hour on Monday afternoon as they landed in Israeli territory.

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The fires broke out in farmland near Shaar Hanegev and the Eshkol Regional Council. Firefighters and employees of the JNF and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority were successfully battling the blazes in the Eshkol region.

One of the fires erupted at a memorial to the late Staff Sgt. Asaf-Yaakov Siboni near Kibbutz Nir Am. Siboni was a Nahal Brigade soldier who was killed when two IDF helicopters crashed in northern Israel in February 1997.

Another incendiary balloon sparked a fire at a nursery school in Kibbutz Saad, which was luckily empty at the time.

On Sunday, after a week of relative calm during which Gaza-adjacent communities in the western Negev were spared arson balloons and kites, seven separate wildfires broke out as a result of several dozen of arson balloons that were released from the Gaza Strip.

A security coordinator for one of the Eshkol region communities said Sunday that "we are battling the problem of arson balloons around the clock."

"That has become our main occupation, while ongoing security work is pushed aside because the balloon terrorism has become a major issue in the day-to-day lives of the residents of [these] communities. The ones who pay the heaviest price are the farmers, who see months of labor go up in flames in moments. Massive damage is also being caused to the fields [themselves] and the crops, as well as to agricultural equipment," the coordinator said.

"The fact that the government and the defense establishment live with this terror and do almost nothing to contain the phenomenon – not shooting down the balloons, but active steps against Hamas and the [other] terrorist groups and the people who release the balloons – is a disgrace.

"The lives of the residents are forfeit. No country in the world would allow terrorism like this to go on, and accept it in defeat," he added.

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