Has Israel’s defense minister given up on toppling Hamas?

A Qassam rocket fell in the southern Israeli city of Sderot on Oct. 5, just meters from the home of Mayor Alon Davidi. Luckily there was no significant damage and no one was badly hurt, though two victims were treated for shock. The Iron Dome missile defense battery did not launch a missile to intercept the rocket, perhaps because of the short range of the Qassams.

On that same night, the Israel Defense Forces carried out a massive series of aerial attacks, most against specific Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip. The next afternoon, another Qassam rocket was fired from Gaza and landed in open Israeli territory with no human casualties. The tons of explosives fired on Gaza by the Israeli air force over the night between the two rocket attacks had no deterrence effect. Echoes of the IDF assault's explosions rang through the length and breadth of Gaza. Yet in a gesture of defiance, the round ended with that last rocket.

This was the first time since Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014 that two Qassam rockets have been fired toward Israel in such a short time. The campaign lowered the number of rocket launches to an all-time low. This peace and quiet was made possible by the new rules instituted between Israel and Hamas since the Protective Edge campaign, and a kind of stable coexistence that took shape between Israel and the terror organization that aspires to destroy it.

These rocket attacks, including the two over the weekend, were not launched by Hamas. On the contrary, Hamas is working hard to prevent such attacks. Instead the rockets came from what are commonly called “rogue organizations” or "recalcitrant groups," mainly Salafi groups or splinter organizations under the influence of the Islamic State. These groups operate on the margins of the Gaza Strip and do not obey Hamas.