My Brother's Keeper: Week 5, Day 1.

For five short hours yesterday there was hope in the Gaza strip as a UN brokered humanitarian cease-fire took effect. This cease-fire was respected by both Israel and Hamas although a rival militant group to Hamas did fire several mortar bombs a short distance into southern Israel. Fortunately neither Hamas nor Israel rose to this provocation and the cease-fire was maintained.

In the early part of the day there seemed to be even better news coming out of peace-talks in Egypt with rumours that Israel had agreed to a more permanent cease-fire backed by further negotiations. I think this is a particularly good offer to Hamas because although their ultimate enemy is Israel many of the recent pressures on Gaza stem from the break-down of the relationship between Hamas and the Egyptian government. As such these negotiations would also provide an opportunity for Hamas to repair that relationship with Egypt alleviating the situation on the ground in Gaza. Unfortunately Hamas didn't see things this way and rejected that cease-fire.

Hamas' rejection of the cease-fire added to an incident overnight that occurred just before the humanitarian cease-fire came into effect. Here 13 Hamas commandos(?!) armed with assault rifles, rocket propelled grenades and explosives crossed into southern Israel via tunnel. They were immediately spotted by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) who engaged with fighter aircraft killing four and forcing the remaining nine to retreat back into Israel. It seems extremely likely that Hamas' intended target was the near-by Sufa kibbutz community where they planned to carry out a massacre of civilians.

This extreme threat to civilian life really left Israel no option other then to mount a ground invasion of eastern Gaza. This type of action moves the fighting away from the relative precision of air-strikes to unguided tank and artillery fire alongside street by street firefights. As a result the number of casualties has increased dramatically as the operation has got underway with 20 civilians, 14 Hamas fighters and 1 Israel soldier being killed in the past 12 hours.

Although this is clearly a step that Israel has wanted to avoid it is making preparations to expand the offensive across the whole of Gaza by calling up a further 18,000 reservists and the more extreme factions of the Israeli government are pushing for the complete re-occupation of Gaza.

(Originally Posted) 11:45 on 18/7/14 (UK date).