Yesterday, Hamas followed up on Saturday’s soccer-field slaughter with another deadly missile attack, which killed an Israeli civilian. The same day, Israel retaliated with an airstrike on Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighborhood—a major Hizballah stronghold—possibly eliminating one of the group’s most senior commanders. The IDF has been routinely attacking military targets in Lebanon since the Iranian proxy initiated a low-intensity war on October 8, but so far has avoided striking Beirut.

In other words, both sides have ignored the advice of the UN secretary-general António Guterres, who responded to the killing of twelve Druze children by urging for “maximum restraint” so as to prevent “any further escalation.” Stephen Daisley comments:

Of course, we all know that Guterres’s words were not intended for Hizballah, they were meant for Benjamin Netanyahu, his government, and its citizens. Restraint, like proportional responses and international law, is something forever enjoined on Israel but seldom her enemies.

The phrase “any further escalation” is the one that gets me. Vinees Adham Alsafadi went out to play football on Saturday and didn’t come home. She was eleven. Milad Muadad Alsha’ar was bombed doing what comes naturally to boys the world over: darting around after a ball dreaming of being the next [star soccer player Lionel] Messi. He was ten. . . . What could Israel do that would match let alone outpace such depravity?

Israel will extract a price from Hizballah, but it will be much less than it deserves. Much less than would be required to deter it from further attacks. Yet when that price comes to be paid, expect the UN and the NGOs and the British Foreign Office to scold and condemn and denounce. There is no restraint Israel could show that would satisfy the one-eyed umpires of warfare etiquette. They simply do not regard Israeli self-defense as legitimate.

And they are in plentiful company. You will search in vain for reports of marches in London, Paris, New York, or Sydney decrying the bombing of twelve Arab children. They were the wrong kind of Arabs, bombed by the wrong people. Twelve children won’t show up for football practice in Majdal Shams this Saturday and all the world cares about is restraint.

Concluded in 1979, the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty ended nearly 30 years of intermittent warfare, and proved one of the most enduring and beneficial products of Middle East diplomacy. But Egypt may not have been upholding its end of the bargain, write Jonathan Schanzer and Mariam Wahba:

Article III, subsection two of the peace agreement’s preamble explicitly requires both parties “to ensure that that acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, or violence do not originate from and are not committed from within its territory.” This clause also mandates both parties to hold accountable any perpetrators of such acts.

Recent Israeli operations along the Philadelphi Corridor, the narrow strip of land bordering Egypt and Gaza, have uncovered multiple tunnels and access points used by Hamas—some in plain sight of Egyptian guard towers. While it could be argued that Egypt has lacked the capacity to tackle this problem, it is equally plausible that it lacks the will. Either way, it’s a serious problem.

Was Egypt motivated by money, amidst a steep and protracted economic decline in recent years? Did Cairo get paid off by Hamas, or its wealthy patron, Qatar? Did the Iranians play a role? Was Egypt threatened with violence and unrest by the Sinai’s Bedouin Union of Tribes, who are the primary profiteers of smuggling, if it did not allow the tunnels to operate? Or did the Sisi regime take part in this operation because of an ideological hatred of Israel?