On Tuesday 29 May the Israeli military launched new air strikes on Gaza, after mortar rounds were fired from Gaza into Israel.
The Israeli military said they had targeted Islamic Jihad and Hamas bases, but one bomb fell in a kindergarten playground, not killing anyone. None of the mortar rounds reached Israeli targets.
Hamas, the Islamic clerical-fascist group which rules Gaza, has given some signals that it currently wants to get a temporary deal for economic relief, rather than military escalation. Islamic Jihad, rather than Hamas, may have fired the mortar rounds.
However, Hamas has called for renewed protests near the Israeli border on 5 June. Israel’s right-wing government remains truculent.
It is building a fortified breakwater, topped with barbed wire, in the sea a few kilometres north of Gaza, to further hem in Gaza.
The whole situation in the Middle East, after Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, remains tense and close to war.