You may be wondering, after so many years of the tit-for-tat Middle East standoff and cease-fire after failed cease-fire, what made Israel suddenly unleash its air force on Hamas security installations in Gaza. Turns out in the past week, Hamas fired about 200 rockets on Israeli cities. In a must-read at the Huffington Post, Ilana Teitelbaum, a writer living in east Jerusalem, stresses, “A lot of things are not reported as explicitly as you might expect. When the victims of attacks are reported as ‘wounded,’ it can mean anything from shrapnel in the lungs to missing legs. … Apparently in Sderot, residents have 15 seconds to find a bomb shelter. In Netivot they are lucky — they have a whopping 30 seconds after the siren sounds.”

Even Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, on the other side of a deadly feud with Hamas, blamed the breakaway leaders in Gaza for instigating the Israel attack. “We talked to them (Hamas) and we told them ‘please, we ask you, do not end the truce. Let the truce continue and not stop’ so that we could have avoided what happened,” he said in Cairo.

Here are the latest updates (and photo gallery):

• Israel strikes about 40 Hamas tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor, which is a strip of land between Egypt and Israel. The tunnels reputedly have been used to smuggle weapons.

• The Palestinian death toll being reported is near 300. It’s impossible to ascertain, with numbers coming from the Gaza Health Ministry, how many were Hamas operatives. Mid-Sunday, the death toll included nine women. But sources are agreeing that the majority of casualties are police and gunmen from Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, Hamas’ military wing. An Israeli was killed by a rocket fired from Gaza on Saturday night.

• Exiled Hamas leader Khaled MashalÂ’s call for a third intifada stoked unrest in the West Bank.

• About 6,500 Israeli reservists have been called up, but it’s unclear whether ground action will be undertaken.

• Egypt pushed back Palestinians trying to breach the Rafah border crossing, and one Egyptian policeman was shot dead in the melee. Meanwhile, Egypt criticized Hamas for not letting the wounded cross over at Rafah.

• The possibility of opening a second front? Hassan Nasrallah has told Hezbollah militants in Lebanon to be on alert. Al-Jazeera has the story.

Another great place for comprehensive coverage is The Jerusalem Post. From their most current roundup story:

“Defense officials were pleased by the dramatic drop in rocket fire – on Saturday over 90 rockets and mortars pounded the South – and said it was likely the combination of a number of factors: Hamas has been significantly weakened due to the non-stop air strikes and its leadership had been hit and had difficulty communicating since many Hamas leaders were underground. There was also the possibility that Hamas was ‘playing with Israel’ and planned to launch barrages in the coming days, they said.


‘Hamas’s operational capabilities were damaged, but the group still has underground launchers as well as the capability to launch attacks along the security fence and into Israel,’ said one senior official.


Officials added that the change in weather – rainstorms are expected throughout the country starting Monday – will impair the air force’s ability to operate over Gaza and could pave the way for Hamas to escalate the rocket fire into Israel. The non-stop bombing of Gaza, officials said, made it difficult for Hamas to set up and fire the launchers.”

(Photo by David Silverman/Getty Images)