Restraint, perhaps too much

Not long after Hamas announced a cease-fire, sparing itself a painful Israeli retaliation, a barrage of missiles and rockets hit Israel. No one was surprised. During previous rounds of battle an unwritten rule was established where Palestinians get to strike Israel last - after the final buzzer, in extra time. Why? Just because. There is no logic or rationale behind it.

Perhaps this is the secret will of Hamas leadership. Perhaps Hamas is turning a blind eye to more extreme factions that won't obey its orders. Perhaps Hamas really means to impose a cease-fire, but has lost the ability to enforce its will on those factions. In other words, the Iranian Frankenstein has turned against its maker in the Gaza Strip. All these scenarios have been hashed and rehashed.

In acting so brazenly, Hamas is taking a page from Egypt. Instead of apologizing for letting a terrorist attack originate in its sovereign territory, Egypt refuses to accept Defense Minister Ehud Barak's expression of regret over the tragic deaths of five Egyptian soldiers. The problem is that the entire Israeli leadership is mincing around on tiptoes -- yesterday President Shimon Peres was the latest to do so -- lest Egypt's Zeus, Hussein Tantawi, get angry.

Meanwhile Egyptian officials have been blaming and castigating Israel. The Supreme Military Council, took power by force last February and now it's demanding that Jerusalem censor its criticism of Egyptian conduct.

It's easy to understand why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak chose to handle this affair with great caution. They need to be the responsible adults in the room. There are three considerations that dictate restraint. First, the September target date for a U.N. General Assembly declaration of Palestinian statehood. Second, extreme sensitivity to the Egyptian regime's stability in the run-up to Egyptian elections. Third, a realization that a second Cast Lead operation might not produce the same calm in its wake as the first Cast Lead. Instead, Israel might find itself reoccupying the Gaza Strip. Nobody wants that, even those Israelis who wax poetic about Gaza being part of our ancestral homeland.

There is no guarantee that the cease fire in the south will hold up over the long-term. Terrorism is a spark that can set the Middle East on fire. If terrorists from Judea and Samaria attacked Jerusalem they might trigger a particularly forceful Israeli response. Arab Israelis and the Arab League would jump to the defense of the terrorists. They'd have no qualms about doing so and no columnists to criticize their positions.

Our leaders must realize that despite the understandable desire to restore calm as quickly as possible, this latest clash ended with a sense of unfinished business. The horror wrought by the Palestinians was Satanic and while the IDF response was forceful, under the circumstances it was too little, too contained and too late.