Shell in May and go away: 7 things to know for May 29

1. It was seemingly inevitable that seething Gaza tensions would boil over eventually, and they did Tuesday morning, in a barrage of mortar fire on southern Israel.

• Political reactions have come in fast, furious and predictable, with a projectile landing in a kindergarten yard raising anger and indignant righteousness to 11 on the dial.
• “The shooting of rockets this morning from Gaza, one of them landing in the yard of an empty kindergarten (!), demonstrates the grave danger Hamas represents to Israeli civilians,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry says in a statement.
• Pictures of the scorched schoolyard are widely distributed, instantly telegraphing the danger posed by the mortar shells, even if most are intercepted or land in unpopulated areas.
• “I am deeply concerned by the indiscriminate firing of rockets by Palestinian militants from Gaza towards communities in Southern Israel. At least one of which hit in the immediate vicinity of a kindergarten and could have killed or injured children,” the UN’s envoy to the region Nickolas Mladenov says in a statement.
• A baffling tweet from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls the kindergarten an Israeli citizen.

2. The more furious response, though, is coming from the Israel Defense Forces, which is hitting back hard (as of this writing, tanks had begun shelling northern Gaza).

• The head of the Eshkol region told Channel 10 news that the army told him the attack was carried out by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group, as revenge for the Israel Defense Forces killing three of its members in a cross-border exchange earlier in the week.
• In a statement, Islamic Jihad described its attack as “a welcome response of the resistance,” adding, “our people’s blood is not cheap.”
• However, many commentators are noting that Islamic Jihad would not have had the go-ahead for such a widescale operation without at least Hamas’s tacit approval and both groups are expected to be targeted when Israel hits back.
• “During the nearly four years since the 2014 war that Israel fought against Hamas and its allies in Gaza, after which there have been several periods of escalation, Israeli intelligence officials have claimed that Hamas does not have full control over what happens in Gaza. According to intelligence estimates, rockets fired from the Strip showed that Hamas was having difficulty imposing its authority on smaller Palestinian factions in Gaza,” Amos Harel writes in Haaretz. “ Now the circumstances are different. Hamas has demonstrated its firm control in recent months and has directed the demonstrations on the Israeli border as it wished, even though they began as an independent initiative.”
• Indeed, Netanyahu threatened shortly after noon that “we see Hamas as responsible,” and warned that both groups would pay the price.

3. In the meantime, authorities are instructing locals to continue their daily routines, which the New York Times interprets as “suggesting that the military was not expecting, or planning, an immediate escalation into a broader conflict.”

• The Ynet news site, however, reports that despite the orders to keep calm and carry on, “support centers have been flooded with calls from agitated residents. In schools and kindergartens, discussions are planned with students [about the situation] and according to assessments, will continue for the next several days.”

4. The print press, a product of a world in which the mortar bombs had not yet been fired at Israel, contains echoes of those simpler times, such as simmering anger over machine gun fire hitting cars and homes in Sderot the night before.

• “Bullets should be treated like rockets,” reads a headline in Israel Hayom, quoting Sderot Mayor Alon Davidi.
• Sderot resident MK Amir Peretz, a former defense minister, tells Yedioth Ahronoth that “we cannot let the gunfire be, we can’t wait until people are injured. Only by some miracle was it only damage to property. We need to make clear to Hamas that we will not allow this gunfire, and any source of fire will be struck.”
• An article on the front page of Haaretz, meanwhile, reports that the US has been hoping to announce a breakthrough in efforts for a longterm ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Strip, but continuing tensions have put that on the back burner.
• “Egypt, the United States and the United Nations have made progress in formulating a plan, and some ideas were discussed for the first time at the Gaza Conference at the White House in March. Both sides, however, are on standby while Hamas gears up for another wave of border protests, starting June 5 – the 51st anniversary of the Six-Day War,” the paper reports.

5. The actual breakthrough, though, seems to have come in the north, where it seems Russia is giving in to Israel’s demand that Iran and other Shiite militias, like Hezbollah, be kept away from the border area.

• Israel’s Hadashot news reported Monday night that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement that only Syrian forces should be in that area was the fruit of a deal between Jerusalem and Moscow.
• Even though Lavrov did not say anything about Iran leaving other areas of Syria, Hadashot news cited Israeli officials who think that the deal means Moscow agrees Iran should not have forces anywhere in the country.
• The deal also reportedly includes continued freedom of action in Syria’s skies, in exchange for Israel supporting Assad’s takeover of southern Syria, which Jerusalem sees as simply realpolitik:
• “Assad was and remains a monster, who has massacred his own people — but that is a matter for the international community and the Arab states,” the TV reported quotes what it says is a very senior Israeli official as saying. “We cannot fix the world. Israel has to ensure its own security.”

6. The moves come as Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman is set to take off for Russia for what Israel Hayom describes as “clarification” meetings with counterpart Sergey Shoigu.

• Haaretz’s Zvi Bar’el reports that the flurry of diplomatic and military activity regarding Iran in southern Syria, including some reports of Iranian troops leaving Dara’a and heading toward Damascus, come as Assad’s army prepares a major offensive to retake the region near the Golan.
• “It is not clear whether this is part of a broader move towards withdrawing the pro-Iranian forces from Syria’s southern border or a temporary arrangement until the Syrian army takes control of the southern province,” he notes.

7. Yedioth Ahronoth reports on a food fight heating up in the Knesset between a spitting mad vegan lawmaker and a vendor who wants to bring meat on a spit — shawarma — to the parliament’s cafeteria.

• The paper reports that MK Yael Cohen Paran has already begun to sign up fellow legislators for a petition against the food stand.
• “We think that operating a stand like this, including an open kitchen with roasting meat and a fry station, is maybe fit for the street, but not for the Knesset and will harm its honor,” she tells the paper, in a comment sure to endear her to the masses.
• Perhaps she should be angrier about the pitas. Israel Hayom reports on a new effort to get the government to start subsidizing healthy foods, instead of the carb-and-calorie heavy staples currently under price control.
• A list put out by the Atid group pushing for this change includes whole wheat bread, low-fat yogurt, cottage cheese and tuna, while removing white bread, sour cream, butter and yellow cheese.