Even the pessimists were disappointed.

Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who has made his low expectations for the agreement with Hamas well known, predicted last week, based on intelligence memos, that the weekly Friday demonstrations at the Gaza fence would start to diminish in intensity. In addition, military intelligence prognosticated that rocket fire from Gaza would begin to tail off.

Neither forecast came to pass. On Erev Shabbos the Gaza fence demonstrations kept pace with previous weeks. And Friday night, Islamic Jihad initiated massive rocket fire, launching 30 salvos at the Negev by morning. Israel’s Iron Dome successfully intercepted all of them. The aftermath was typical: the Israeli Air Force struck 95 targets in Gaza, belonging to both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, prompting Egypt to hurriedly call for a cease-fire.

The IDF pins blame for the rocket fire squarely on Islamic Jihad. The volatile group takes its orders from Tehran, not from Hamas. The rocket fire could be part of Iran’s strategy to sabotage Egyptian efforts to broker a long-term Gaza cease-fire. (At the end of the week, there were reports of progress in three-party talks between Israel, Egypt, and Hamas.) Or Islamic Jihad could simply be selling itself as the group spearheading the resistance against Israel, while Hamas engages in parley and compromise. One thing for sure — Islamic Jihad’s new leader, Ziad al-Nakhleh, wants to leave his mark.

Observers can’t help wondering whether IDF claims of Hamas recalcitrance — Hamas didn’t really want to fire rockets over Shabbos, just as it didn’t want to fire at Be’er Sheva and Gush Dan two weeks ago (“the launchers were hit by lightning”), or at the Gaza periphery settlements early last week (“it was rebel groups”) — might simply reflect Israeli reluctance to spark a new conflict now, when in fact Hamas is inching closer and closer to the brink.

At the end of the day, however, Hamas’s motives or aspirations are not at issue; more importantly, defense establishment officials say that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will be politically hard put to tolerate rockets flying into Israel weekly and incendiary kites and balloons causing havoc almost daily. People construe Netanyahu’s restraint as abandoning the residents of the Gaza periphery, and feel that the government is emboldening Hamas by making seemingly empty threats.

Even if Netanyahu has reasons for his reluctance to launch a full-blown operation — which, in the final analysis, might not even achieve anything — he might be left with no choice due to political pressure. Tensions are building inside the government, mainly between Lieberman and National Security Advisor Meir Ben-Shabbat, who Lieberman claims is responsible for Netanyahu’s dovishness vis-à-vis Hamas. It bears noting that Ben-Shabbat is no newbie; during his years in the Shin Bet, he served as head of the Southern District and specialized in the struggle with Hamas. Nevertheless, the political need to crush Hamas may well carry the day.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 733)