The most recent round of violence between Israel and the Gaza Strip on May 4 and 5 was more violent and deadlier than the ones before. For the first time in a long while, Israel’s military skipped directly to measures it usually reserves for more advanced stages of such fighting, killing Hamas targets and demolishing the organization’s command centers located in residential apartment buildings in Gaza. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad seem to have had the same idea of an advanced fighting stage. According to Arab media reports, the two groups tried to breach the defenses of Israel’s anti-missile Iron Dome batteries with heavy barrages designed to overwhelm the system’s interceptor rockets and improve the prospects of penetration. “Iron Dome’s success rate is still high,” an Israeli security source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, “but when you let loose many missiles at once, naturally the numbers of non-intercepted missiles grow accordingly. It is still the same 8% [of non-intercepted missiles], but when 10 missiles penetrate the defenses, the effect is different than when two do.”

For Israel, this resulted in a grim toll: four civilian deaths and searing, incontrovertible proof that it cannot defend itself hermetically against a hail of rockets, anti-tank missiles and artillery shells, a further indication that the addiction to Iron Dome has some unhealthy aspects, as well.

Factors that accelerated the escalation were at play this time on both the Israeli and Gaza side. On the Israeli side, there is a new, energetic army chief, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, who appears to have had enough of the periodic rounds of fighting with Gaza occurring at shorter and shorter intervals. On the other side, the Islamic Jihad is becoming increasingly independent, shaking off all restraints, ruining Hamas plans and spoiling its parties. Members of the Israeli government’s security Cabinet say intelligence reports point to two possible motivations for this Islamist group’s decision. One is that the group is carrying out orders from Tehran, which is in desperate need of a violent clash between Israel and the Palestinians. The other, a security source said on condition of anonymity, is that the Islamic Jihad is simply a gang of “irresponsible, childish and violent people,” as its leaders were described in one intelligence report (reported here May 3).

Either way, everyone in Israel understands that the relatively short round that ended through Egyptian-Qatari mediation was only a teaser. Former Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, who stepped down in November over what he described as Israeli inactivity vis-a-vis Gaza and because his demand for broad military action in the Strip was rejected, is warming up on the sidelines. Leaks by associates of the hawkish right-wing politician indicate that he has reached an understanding regarding Gaza with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to appoint Liberman anew as defense minister in the fifth government Netanyahu is cobbling together. This cannot be good news for Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. Liberman is also counting on Kochavi; before Liberman quit as defense minister, he tagged Kochavi to become chief of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) despite Netanyahu’s preference for another candidate, Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir. Kochavi has already delivered a first installment. In the latest round with Gaza, Kochavi ordered the air force to bomb joint Hamas and Islamic Jihad command centers, some located in apartment buildings, and provided a sample of Israel’s capabilities in carrying out “targeted eliminations” of its enemies when it fired an airborne missile at a vehicle carrying Hamad Hudri, who served as Iran’s paymaster in Gaza before he was killed.