A mortar shell landed May 29 in the yard of the Shibolim preschool in one of the kibbutzim bordering the Gaza Strip. The shell hit a eucalyptus tree, which provided shade to the playground, and exploded in the yard. The incident happened half an hour before the young children were supposed to go out into the yard to play. Because the preschool is so close to Gaza, the children and their caregivers are given just 7-12 seconds of warning whenever Hamas or Islamic Jihad fire rockets. Often the “red alert” alarm coincides with the shells’ impact. At other times, the sirens go off a few seconds after a shell has already landed. Had they hit the preschool this time, Gaza would now be engulfed in the flames of war. An event like this is a real nightmare scenario for Israel because the cost is so simple to calculate: War! Now! Israel would have invaded the Gaza Strip, this time in order to conquer it, even if it didn’t want to do that.

Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot toured the region in the afternoon and paid a visit to the preschool, for which his army almost went to war. Although the shell had hit only a few hours before, almost all the children were still present. Eizenkot thought that he would encounter fear, silence or sharp criticism. Instead, the hour he spent at Shibolim was the most pleasant stop on his entire visit to the south that day. The children seemed cheerful and happy, and the staff positive. IDF spokesman Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis later told Al-Monitor that this was “the best meeting to assess the situation that the chief of staff has had recently." He added, "There is no better way to learn about the resilience of the Israeli home front and how it stands firm, even when faced with an experience like that.”

That’s how wars break out in the Middle East. They sneak up to center stage when no one wants them, and surprise everyone. The fighting that erupted yesterday between Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Israel was the first major outbreak of real violence since Operation Protective Edge in 2014, and it happened right in the middle of sensitive strategic efforts between the parties — mediated by Egypt and Qatar — to achieve a long-term cease-fire.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad fired more rockets at Israel May 29 than in the past four years combined. Exactly when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was about to make a difficult decision over certain concessions in Gaza, he was confronted with this entirely different reality. This sort of situation was best described once by the outgoing Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai. Speaking to Al-Monitor, he compared the Gaza Strip to a pressure cooker. The opening stages are the same; the pot is filled with water, sealed and put over a low flame. If the steam building up inside is not released, the pot will explode. When Hamas has its back to the wall, the explosion will inevitably come. The fact that Hamas is directly responsible for the suffering of the people in Gaza, or that if it changed its policies there would no longer be any need for the closure, is totally irrelevant. Israel is the responsible adult in the region, even if it never chose to be that, even if it has failed to break free of the cycle of violence that spirals into another round of fighting every two or three years and even if it did withdraw from the Gaza Strip, clearing the territory to the very last inch. The dead end in Gaza leads the parties into a ritual brawl with frustrating regularity, and there is no one around to say “Stop it! That’s enough!”