It’s a case of slings and arrows against lightning.

For the Palestinians, it really is about stone-throwing slings. Though their ‘arrows’ are fire balloons and backyard-built rockets.

Israel is responding with Lightning II stealth fighters, tanks, guided missiles and snipers.

How did it come to this?

Gaza militants over the weekend fired some 600 rockets at Israel, killing four civilians and injuring dozens more. Israel has responded with air and artillery strikes, killing 22, including three women and two infants.

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The leader of Hamas says his group is “not interested in a new war” with Israel, after two days of heavy rocket fire from Gaza and Israeli air strikes on the blockaded territory.

Ismail Haniyeh said in a statement this morning that the militant group is ready to “return to the state of calm” if Israel stops its attacks “and immediately starts implementing understandings about a dignified life.”

But all indications are Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants the fight to continue.

Israeli Cabinet ministers issued a statement after a nearly five-hour meeting saying the “ultimate consideration is the security of the state and its residents”, and the military offensive against the Gaza Strip would continue.

Has Hamas given Netanyahu the trigger he wanted to initiate his election-campaign promise to formally annex Palestinian territory once and for all?

ISRAEL PREPARED FOR ‘BROAD CAMPAIGN’

The recent re-election of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a hard-right campaign has done nothing to reduce tensions in the tumultuous region.

During the campaign, the Prime Minister promised to “annex” parts of the West Bank — a piece of territory on the western bank of the Jordan River between Israel and Jordan established as Palestinian territory by the United Nations.

“I’m going to extend sovereignty,” he said in an interview with Israeli Channel 12 in early April, stating: “I don’t differentiate between the settlement blocs and isolated settlements.”

He was speaking shortly after US President Donald Trump recognised as valid Israel’s 1981 annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights.

“Everyone says you can’t hold an occupied territory, but this proves you can,” Netanyahu said. “If occupied in a defensive war, then it’s ours.”

The Palestinian West Bank was seized by Jordan during the 1948 War of Independence. It was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Since then, illegal settlers have been pushing Palestinians out of their farms and homes to establish new, often ultra-orthodox Jewish enclaves. Now, about 450,000 Israelis live in settlements deemed illegal by the United Nations.

Amid renewed Palestinian protests in March, Netanyahu also toured the internationally recognised border with the Gaza Strip — a Palestinian enclave on the Mediterranean coast.

“I recently ordered that the [IDF] units be reinforced, that tools be added, in preparation for an extensive campaign,” Netanyahu said on the conclusion of his visit. “All citizens of Israel know that if an extensive campaign is necessary — we will go into it strong and secure …”

Israel’s right-wing political groups — to whom Netanyahu owes his re-election — have been ramping up the pressure to respond harshly to Palestinian protests, rockets and incendiary balloons.

Egypt has, however, been actively pursuing a new long-term ceasefire.

Its intelligence officials have reportedly been urging Palestinian factions work to restrain violent protests and attacks. From Israel, negotiators have been seeking an easing of harsh travel and trade restrictions effectively blockading the two million inhabitants of Gaza.

Its efforts are ongoing, though attempts to establish a midnight ceasefire last night failed.

ISRAELI SETTLER ATTACKS

The outgoing head of the Israeli army Gadi Eisenkot warned last month that a leap in Jewish extremist violence would lead to another West Bank flare-up.

“What we’ve seen recently is a rise in nationalistic crime. This is a small group that is challenging the state, challenging the IDF,” Eisenkot told Hadashot TV. “This is a very grave phenomenon that must be dealt with. This could ignite the ground.”

That ignition appears to have happened.

Tensions have been stoked in recent weeks by a series of attacks by illegal Israeli settlers against Palestinian towns.

Residents of Dier Dibwan in the West Bank recently woke to discover their mosque daubed with the Star of David and abusive graffiti as it falls under the eye of expansionists.

Israel’s own security agency, Shin Bet, recorded some 295 incidents of what it described as “Jewish terror” last year. This represented a spike of some 40 per cent.

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This compares to what it defines as 1153 “Palestinian terror” attacks last year — though this figure is inflated through the inclusion of stone-throwing incidents.

Such incidents have only been escalating this year, with Israeli media putting the increase as high as 300 per cent over that recorded during the same period of 2018.

In January, a Palestinian was killed and nine others injured when a ‘volunteer security team’ militia opened fire during a confrontation outside the West Bank village of al-Mughayyir.

Earlier, a pregnant Israeli woman lost her child after a series of drive-by shootings near the illegal settlement of Ofra.

Then, in an incident late last month, Israeli colonists poisoned a well near the town of Yatta, south of Hebron, in an effort to force the Palestinian population out to allow for new expansion.

APARTHEID STATE?

Last week, outgoing French Ambassador to the United States, Gérard Araud declared Israel to already be an apartheid state and that US Presidential Adviser (and son-in-law) Jared Kushner’s Middle East peace plan was “99 per cent” doomed to fail.

He also highlighted Israel’s dilemma — leaving the Palestinians forced to live under its control “totally stateless or make them citizens of Israel”.

He was blistering in his conclusion: “(Israel) won’t make them citizens … So they will have to make it official, which is we know the situation, which is an apartheid. There will be officially an apartheid state. They are in fact already.”

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Palestinians already living within Israel’s borders have not been granted citizenship. They do not have the right to vote, nor the freedom to move from place to place.

In much of the territory defined as being Palestinian by the UN, the Israeli army exerts complete martial law. This represents some 60 per cent of the West Bank, where illegal settlers have now displaced most of the original Palestinian inhabitants.

If Netanyahu follows through with his threat to annex the West Bank, it would formally impose Israeli law over all Palestinians living there.

In Israel’s eyes, the West Bank would become sovereign territory — and the Palestinians will lose whatever vestiges of self-rule they have, and be forced to live in fenced-off enclaves without any of the rights or protections of Israeli law.

Former US negotiator Dennis Ross tweeted that after any annexation of the West Bank or Gaza, Palestinians would be forced to demand full Israeli citizenship.

But Israel’s far-right politicians have long since rejected such a prospect.

Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat said moves to annex Palestinian territory yet another Israeli violation of international law.

“Such a statement by Netanyahu is not surprising,” he said in a statement at the time. “Israel will continue to brazenly violate international law for as long as the international community will continue to reward Israel with impunity.”