BBC Online :Palestinian militants have fired more rockets at Israeli cities after Israel carried out dozens of air strikes on Gaza in the early hours of Wednesday.Israel said it had intercepted eight rockets over Tel Aviv, Ashkelon and Ashdod on Wednesday morning.Medical officials in Gaza said one man had been killed in an Israeli air strike on a motorcycle.The health ministry in Gaza says at least 25 Palestinians have been killed and 70 hurt in the recent hostilities.The ministry said that four women and three children were among the dead.The military wing of Hamas has warned that all Israelis are now targets.Israel’s military said that overnight it had targeted 118 concealed rocket launchers, 10 Hamas command and control centres and 10 tunnels.It brought to 440 the number of targets in Gaza attacked as part of “Operation Protective Edge”.The military said 117 rockets had hit Israel on Tuesday, with the Iron Dome interceptor system shooting down 20. Three rockets landed around Jerusalem.Iron Dome intercepted two more rockets above Tel Aviv on Wednesday morning, three over Ashkelon and three over Ashdod.The town of Hadera 100km (60 miles) north of Gaza, was also attacked, with an M-302 surface-to-surface rocket, the furthest target so far reached.Officials in Gaza said an Israeli attack killed an unidentified man on a motorcycle on Wednesday.Israel said it had targeted Islamic Jihad member Abdullah Diyfallah.As the military temperature rises it becomes harder to see what the shape of any endgame between Israel and Gaza might look like.Hamas will find it difficult to walk away from this round of conflict without something to persuade its own people that the death and destruction in Gaza has achieved something. It will want prisoners released as part of a deal. Israel will be reluctant.The pressure of public opinion too weighs on Israel, which has talked in terms of a final end to the rocket threat from Gaza. That’s a tall order when Israel itself estimates that Hamas has a stockpile of 10,000.Such cycles of conflict have ended in the past of course – as recently as November 2012 – but for now the talk is of deterioration, when last week the buzzword was de-escalation. Egypt’s intelligence services remain a possible go-between but for now there appear to be no moves towards peace. When an Israeli cabinet minister was asked if there were any, he said simply: “Not now.”Late on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “significantly expand our operations against Hamas” in the face of the rocket threat.
