What is new has been the rioting in mixed Jewish-Arab cities
The current fighting between Hamas and Israel is to a large extent a rerun: It is the fifth major confrontation between Israel and Hamas since Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005. We have seen this script before: Thousands of rockets — Hamas rockets, albeit with longer range, improved accuracy, and larger payloads — aimed at Israel’s cities; international condemnations of Israel’s response to the deliberate targeting of its civilian population as “disproportionate”; and UN calls for a cease-fire before sufficient damage has been inflicted on the Hamas military infrastructure that it will not feel free to resume where it left off in a matter of months or a few years at the most.