The relentless assault on Gaza is set to continue even as a temporary ceasefire was put in place. While Hamas has agreed to a temporary truce, the Israelis are acting in two contradictory directions and deliberately creating confusion.

At the same time that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the latest ceasefire proposal to his cabinet, his Minister of Defence warned that the army was preparing new and larger ground operations in Gaza. The cabinet rejected the ceasefire terms although the Israelis announced a unilateral 12-hour “pause” in the fighting to cover yesterday.

The planned muddled response from the Israelis allows them to reap the international benefit of their “pause” while not being committed to any of the political requirements of the ceasefire deal. It also allows Israeli troops to continue their current work of destroying the cross-border tunnels without any conditions being imposed on them.

The Israelis have already killed more than 950 Palestinians in Gaza in the current round of fighting. Three-quarters of them were civilians and the dead leave behind rightly furious and embittered relatives, along with millions of fellow Gazans and Palestinians all over the territories who will never want to make peace with those directly responsible for the savage murder of so many people.

Nonetheless, US Secretary of State John Kerry is attempting to find the right terms for a seven-day ceasefire, which he hopes will cover the days of Eid, during which both sides will work with intermediaries to find the terms for a long-term truce.

Hamas leader Khalid Mesha’al has repeatedly said that he wants an end to the blockade of Gaza.

The Israelis are ignoring the fact that rocket attacks had almost completely stopped for two years under the previous truce. This exposes the underlying truth that the attack on Gaza has nothing to do with the Gazans, but a lot of do with Israel trying to wreck the reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, which was leading to a united Palestinian government with much greater legitimacy.