The first mortar shell didn't wait. Not even a minute.
On Friday, at eight in the morning, the first mortar shell landed in the Gaza enclave, making fun of the high-sounding words, the endless barbarism, the hopes, the threats, the assessments, and the conditions.
Operation Protective Edge entered a new phase this weekend. A strange phase. It is clear to Hamas that the operation is over, and also to the soldiers of the 50th Battalion of the Nahal, who are still with their armored personnel carriers (an M-113 armored personnel carrier, of the exact same type, 30-40 years old, that was hit by the RPG in Sajaiya in the difficult incident in which seven Golani fighters were killed), in front of the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, from which they left only a few days ago.
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Although the IDF officially still holds the whip of the ground entry on standby, it was also clear to the young Nahal fighters securing the APCs last night that there was no point in their re-entry into the Strip, after they had completed, at the heavy cost of 64 casualties, the goal for which they entered, the destruction of the array of 32 tunnels that Hamas dug into Israeli territory.
The fighters of the Nahal Brigade, as an example of all the ground forces inside the Strip, had already been home for a few hours, had already begun to investigate the brigade's movements in recent weeks, and had already begun to prepare for their major brigade exercise in the Golan Heights soon.
In the absence of an apparent order to enter the Strip by ground, the IDF has effectively gone back a month in terms of the mission: aerial bombing in an attempt to suppress the mortar and rocket fire. The relatively low number of attacks and casualties in Gaza shows that the Air Force is very far from taking off its gloves in the post-operation phase - but it is still an operation, which is where we are. A time of injuries. A time of decisions.
The Israeli security establishment still hopes that the long-term deterrence they promised, both in front of the cameras and in talks with the heads of the councils in the south, which inevitably involves postponing the next round in Gaza by a good few years, can still be achieved when the last mortar shell has been fired.
Chief of Staff Benny Gantz is a wise and sober man. When he came to the Gaza Division last week, on Wednesday, he wanted to instill some optimism among the shattered and worried residents of the south, and so he spoke of the red anemones that will continue to bloom in the fields that were run over by tanks in recent weeks.
From the military's perspective, from the moment the forces left the Strip and the destruction of the tunnels was complete, the main military mission was over. However, from the perspective of the residents of the South, nothing ends as long as they are being shot at. Not a drizzle, but a rain of attempted murder. In retrospect, it seems that Chief of Staff Gantz and Southern Command Major General Sami Turgeman should have delayed their invitation to the residents of the Gaza enclave, who rightly call themselves residents of "Gaza's Hijacker," to return to the kibbutzim and moshavim on the Strip border.
Former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin, who runs opinionated accounts on social media, already wondered over the weekend, "Why did the Chief of Staff and the Southern Command general rush to call on residents of the Gaza Strip to return to their homes even before the 72-hour ceasefire ended? Why did we have to inform and show Hamas that the operation was over from our perspective, before the ceasefire had stabilized?""
The answer to this question has not yet been received from the IDF, but what is clear is that the fighting in Gaza, which the army already calls a war, is on the highway to beyond the 34 days - longer than the last war, the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006.
And who remembers now that Chief of Staff Gantz wanted a short campaign? And who remembers that the initial order to the IDF forces was to destroy three tunnels in 72 hours? And who remembers Defense Minister Moshe-Bogi Ya'alon's statement about the two or three days required to complete the mission?
• The writer is the military correspondent for News 10
