Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Ereket speaks during a conference at An-Najah National University in the West Bank city of Nablus. (Rami Swidan, Maan Images)

Israeli troops and tanks have left Gaza and are poised on the border of the coastal strip. Hamas militants have largely ceased bombarding southern Israel with their rockets.

After the latest round of Mideast bloodletting, in early March, in which over 100 Palestinians were killed, four Israeli soldiers died and Palestinian rockets for the first time slammed into a major Israeli city, a tense quiet has descended on the area.

But few believe it is more than a temporary lull in the ongoing warfare between Israel and Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since violently routing the more moderate Fatah movement in June last year.

It seems almost inevitable that some time in the coming weeks Israel will carry out a targeted assassination of Hamas militants in Gaza, or a rocket fired from the strip will slam into a home in Israel causing casualties, and again the violence will erupt.

The question being asked, however, is whether Israel will launch a major, wide-scale military operation in Gaza aimed at toppling Hamas and ending the rocket fire. The operation in early March, in which hundreds of troops backed by armoured vehicles and warplanes moved on populated areas in northern Gaza in a bid to target those firing the rockets and destroy rocket stockpiles, was a limited operation.

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News has begun trickling out in recent days of "new understandings" indirectly forged between Israel and Hamas, with the assistance of Egyptian and U.S. mediation. The basic formula: No rocket fire on Israel by Palestinian militants and no attacks by the Israeli military in Gaza.

A recent statement by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seems to back up these informal rules of engagement. "If they don't fire Qassams (rockets) at us, we won't attack in Gaza," he said.

In the last few days, the understandings seem to be holding. Only three rockets have been fired into Israel compared with 50 a day when the fighting was raging in the first few days of March. The Israeli military, for its part, has withdrawn all troops from Gaza and has also stopped carrying out aerial attacks on Palestinian militants in the strip.

A new balance of deterrence seems to have emerged: if Israel targets Hamas militants, the Islamic movement will fire rockets into Israel, including at a major Israeli city.

For the first time, during the latest round of fighting, Hamas fired longer-range, Iranian-supplied Grad missiles, hitting the populated neighbourhoods of the port city of Ashkelon. Located some 10 kilometres north of Gaza, it his home to 120,000 people. Until now, Hamas had confined its rocket fire to smaller Israeli communities closer to Gaza.

To read the full article please visit Inter Press Service.