“There hasn’t been a ceasefire as far as a stop to the violence against Palestinians from the moment that the ceasefire was announced to Tuesday when it was very clearly broken by the Israelis in escalating fashion,” said Yousef Munayyer, a senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington, D.C., who heads its Palestine/Israel Program.

The Israeli military said Wednesday that it had launched “targeted ground activities” in south and central Gaza, a day after launching an aerial bombardment of the Strip that shattered the two-month-old ceasefire with Hamas.

Facing legal and political pressure at home, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to resume airstrikes has encouraged right-wing allies back into the fold.