Until next time: 8 things to know for May 31

1. Almost as suddenly as the fire started Tuesday, it stopped Wednesday, and a day after the worst flareup in Gaza-Israel violence since 2014, pundits were left trying to figure out what just happened and what it all means.

• For one, the sudden outburst of violence showed how easy it is for the region to slide back into war, and nobody is under the illusion that there won’t be more such rounds of fighting in the future, with headlines in the Israeli press making liberal use of phrases like “for now” and “until next time.”
• Not surprisingly, both sides are attempting to broadcast victory.
• Israel Hayom, seen by some as a mouthpiece for the Israeli government, has a front page headline reporting that after the latest round of fighting, Israelis think they will be in a much better position to demand large concessions from Hamas.
• The paper reports that on the table is a hudna or period of calm, to last five years, in which Israel would agree to large infrastructure projects that will raise the quality of life in the beleaguered Strip.
• “In exchange, Israel is expected to demand limits on Hamas’s militant activities. The group is not expected to give up on power or maintaining security in the Strip, but Israel believes it will agree to limit itself regarding smuggling and weapons manufacturing, as well as its tunnel building,” the paper reports.
• Other pundits are not so sure Israel can claim much of a victory.
• “Instead of deterrence, Israel and [Hamas and Islamic Jihad] have struck a balance of agreements, as though the parties were two enemy states accepting the limitations of their strength,” Zvi Bar’el writes in Haaretz, declaring Egypt the big winner for its mediating abilities.
• “Calm without victory,” reads the front page headline of tabloid Yedioth Ahronoth, and columnist Yossi Yehoshua writes that the army should have kept pounding at Gaza, bemoaning the fact that not a single Gazan was killed.
• “So now Hamas agrees to stop rocket fire from all the groups. But what if tomorrow morning it continues to send cells to the border and Israeli troops kill them? Islamic Jihad has set a high price for that. That’s why Israel should not have agreed to the ceasefire, unless the conditions for Israel were a lot better and after the other side understood the price of losing.”

2. Another lesson learned, this one by Hamas, is that the marches on the fence work better than rockets, according to Haaretz’s Jacky Khoury.

• “From Hamas’ point of view, the March of Return and the pictures being broadcast every weekend from along the fence have brought the siege and the humanitarian distress in Gaza back to center stage, both internationally and in the Middle East, including in Israel. Not surprisingly, reports are appearing about Arab and international initiatives to help the Gaza Strip, without demanding that Hamas disarm or relinquish its rule and return the Palestinian Authority to power,” he writes.
• In The Times of Israel, Avi Issacharoff reports that Hamas was late jumping on the rocket bandwagon.
• “Now that the flames have died down a little, these two terrorist organizations are marketing their fire into Israel as a fully coordinated, joint operation. In reality, the picture is likely more complicated: After the three Islamic Jihad operatives were killed, and it sought to respond, the group’s masters in Tehran encouraged an escalation,” he writes. “For its part, Hamas initially ignored the mortar fire, in order to allow Islamic Jihad to let off steam, but then joined in with the attacks on Israel so as not to lose too many points in Palestinian public opinion. At the same time, Hamas was conveying messages to Egypt within hours of the start of the barrages that it wanted a return to the previous truce.”

3. In Israel Hayom, columnist Yoav Limor predicts that without a ceasefire in place, the sides will be fighting again soon enough.

• “The past teaches that the next round of fighting will pick up where the last dropped off. After four years of quiet, something went off two days ago among the Palestinian groups, and that thing will not go back to how it was,” he writes. “That doesn’t mean the deterrent is totally gone but there will not be total silence like we enjoyed after Protective Edge, and if there is no formal calm, we can expect more rounds of fighting in increasing intensity.”
• The Gaza border region street is similarly pessimistic about the chances of the quiet lasting long.
• “During the last war, every time they announced a truce, before we knew it, there were rockets flying over our heads again,” a grandmother in Sderot tells Haaretz.
• She has a right to be prickly, recounted her harrowing experience being stuck at an acupuncturist when the rocket siren sounded: “Everyone else in the clinic ran for cover, but I was stuck on my back with all these needles in me. Even though I cried out for help, nobody heard me.”

4. Yedioth Ahronoth reports that military planners were careful to try and keep things from getting out of hand because they were worried about having to deal with war on two fronts.

• With Gaza apparently taken care of, though, for now, attention turns back to the northern front. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman is in Moscow Thursday for lightning talks over Syria and keeping Iran out of Israel’s business.
• “Compared to Syria, Gaza is considered a secondary front,” Amos Harel writes in Haaretz.
• Russian state news agency Sputnik, reporting on Liberman’s trip and his likely demands that Iran needs to get away from the border region, quotes Tehran professor Mohammad Marandi, saying he is nonplussed due to the fact that “Iran does not have and never had forces in southern Syria.”
• “Iran does not participate in all operations across Syria. The Iranians do not have a presence in the south, contrary to what the Israelis keep saying,” he’s quoted saying.

5. If one is looking for a metaphor for Israel being chased from quagmire to quagmire, one can do little better than this video from a baseball game in Detroit last night, during which a duck wandered onto the field and was chased until it finally flew away, slamming straight into a scoreboard just when it thought it was free.

A goose was on the field in Detroit during a rain delay, and then they tried to get it off the field. So it flew away. And smashed into a video board. pic.twitter.com/BGhZhQ84CB

— Justin Russo (@FlyByKnite) May 31, 2018

6. As for Israel’s internal threats, Jewish Home head Naftali Bennett dismisses concerns about a Knesset bill that would block the Supreme Court from overturning laws, saying it’s actually good for Israeli democracy.

• “We need checks and balances, but the checks and balances are not balanced. We need to rebalance that very sensitive area,” he tells the Times of Israel’s Raoul Wootliff.

7. One law unlikely to be overturned is a ban on smoking in public places where families congregate, like parks, which passed the Knesset on Wednesday.

• Yedioth Ahronoth reports that smoking is actually becoming less popular in Israel, with 20.5 percent of citizens listed as smokers, down from 22.5% a year earlier. However, the number is still higher than the 19.8% recorded in 2014 and 2015, according to the paper.

8. The bizarre faked death of Russian journalist Arkady Babchenka also makes news in Israel, and not just because it’s so strange.

• The Times of Israel reports that Babchenko, who is Jewish, fled Russia for Prague, but had visa issues and ended up in Tel Aviv. Despite having only nice things to say about the place, he left after a month and went to Ukraine.

• Haaretz reruns an interview it did with him in 2017 when he was here, apparently for medical treatment, during which he bemoans having to move around the globe “from one hellhole to another” after being threatened over a Facebook post.