War in Gaza Far from Over?

Israeli aircrafts bombed targets in southern Gaza on Tuesday night in response to a rocket attack fired by Palestinian militants that hit the Israeli port city of Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 people 10 miles north of Gaza, earlier in the day.
The rockets that fired from Gaza went deeper into Israel than ever before during the offensive, leading to Israeli concerns that more foreign made rockets were being smuggled into Gaza through tunnels under the border with Egypt.

With this growing concern, Israel bombed the smuggling tunnels that connects Gaza with Egypt on Tuesday night and fired a missile at a training camp of the armed wing of the Islamist Hamas movement, which rules the enclave. Although there were no immediate reports of injuries and casualties from the Palestinian or Israeli side after both events, the possibility of peace and cooperation in Gaza is slim.

Since both sides ordered ceasefires on Jan 18 after Israel's 22-day blitz on Gaza, attacks have begun to dramatically increase since Jan. 27. Some of the attacks that have continually increased include periodic rocket and mortar shelling since the ceasefires was declared, and militants have even detonated a roadside bomb blast that killed an Israeli soldier on a Gaza border patrol. But Palestinian militants claim they were simply responding to Israeli fire.

Even though Hamas denies that it has been firing rockets and that there has been no declaration of responsibility for the rocket attack on Ashkelon, leaders in Gaza explain that the rockets were fired as a means of testing and challenging Israel, Egypt and Hamas.

Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas leader in Gaza, said Israel's decision to declare a unilateral cease-fire, without reaching agreements with Hamas, "opens the door for some factions to prove themselves at this time."

But Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, is not happy about the events that have occurred. Olmert had warned Hamas that there would be a harsh response to any further rocket fire from Gaza and vowed that the "smallest provocation would bring the harshest reaction" until the rocket fire on Israel ceased.

"We prefer, usually, to do things rather than make declarations. And when we do things, they are heard from one end of the country to the other and from one end of Gaza to the other," he said during a tour in northern Israel.

To top it off, Israeli media have suggested that any new retaliation towards Palestine could include the assassination of Hamas leaders, several of them that went to ground during the Gaza offensive and have yet to emerge.

But not all is doom and gloom for Israel and Palestine's future. Egypt has been trying with the U.S.'s approbal to create and advise a long term truce which would end Palestinian arms smuggling and also lead to reopening the coastal enclave's border crossings, one of Hamas's key demands.

A Hamas delegation planned to meet Egyptian mediators in Cairo on Tuesday to deliver a response to the truce proposals. Responding to Egypt's mediation, Hamas said on Monday it would be prepared to halt hostilities for a year if a deal could be reached on lifting Israel's crippling blockade of Gaza.