Sometime between March 30 and May 15, Hamas plans to organize a protest in which some 100,000 Palestinians will amass at the fence separating the Gaza Strip from Israel and attempt to cross into Israeli territory. The marchers will be trying, at least symbolically, to return to the homes from which their ancestors were supposedly expelled in 1948. Hillel Frisch comments:

The immediate objective of the prospective fence-stormers is not so much to kill Israelis (though if that can be achieved, even better) but to get killed themselves. Their hope is that Israel will resort to force to maintain the border (as would any sovereign state) and thereby create the graphics and funerals that delegitimize Israel.

The long-term objective of the event is, in fact, to kill and maim Israelis and damage their property. Hamas and other factions are hoping [Israel’s response to the march] will lead to mass waves of violent protest and self-initiated suicide terrorist acts in the West Bank and among Israel’s Arab citizens. Ideally, from the perspective of the Palestinian organizations, it will yield a full-scale intifada. . . .

Israel wants to maintain the status quo in which people go about their lives peacefully. The Palestinian terrorist organizations want to change the status quo. Gaza, after eleven years of Hamas rule, is meant to become another Ghouta, another bloody Baghdad, or even another full-fledged failed Palestinian state.

This project is fraught with difficulty because the Palestinians are divided, even more so after the attempted assassination of the Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah in Gaza. So divided are they that the major actors—the Palestinian Authority and Fatah on the one hand and Hamas and Islamic Jihad on the other—can’t even agree on the date on which the fence-storming should take place.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.