On a Low Simmer - Saad al-Naami

Al Ahram Weekly, March 5-11, 2009 - ....What has worried the Israelis is the fact that the Palestinians have begun to fire more advanced missiles than those fired during the war. Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot has reported the Israeli police as saying that the missiles fired by Palestinians have begun to hit the shelters built by the Israeli army.

And what has provoked the ire of decision-making circles in Israel is the growing belief among wide sectors of the Israeli public that the war on Gaza, which was widely condemned around the world as constituting a war crime, still did not meet its goals and wrought results opposite to those intended. Military commentator for Yediot Aharonot Ron Ben Yeshai has written that wide sectors of the Israeli populace are bitterly disappointed, and in particular the settlers of the south, for whom the promises of the government and the army leadership to put an end for good to the missile threats did not come to fruition. "Israel refused to reach a truce agreement with Hamas that would guarantee calm for Israel and lift the siege from the Palestinians in Gaza, indicating that the war had not met its goals," he wrote.....

Confrontations between the resistance and the Israeli army are currently on a low simmer, but if a truce agreement is not reached between Israel and the Palestinian factions that guarantees an end to invasions, a lifting of the siege, and reconstruction, the start of a larger scale confrontation will be only a matter of time.