Photo Credit: Flash 90
Smoke rises after The Israeli Air Force bombed terrorists' smuggling tunnels in Rafiah at the Gaza-Egypt border.

Islamic Jihad leaders said Thursday afternoon that Egypt has brokered a ceasefire following the Israeli Air Force’s bombing of smuggling tunnels in the Gaza-Egypt border city of Rafiah Thursday afternoon in retaliation for Islamic Jihad missile attacks on the Ashkelon-Ashdod area earlier in the day.

Israel has not commented on the report, but there is relative quiet in the Jewish communities near Gaza.

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“The ceasefire has been reached with the mediation of Egypt and will continue until Israel breaks it,” Islamic Jihad said in a statement.

Assuming the terrorists honor the ceasefire, which probably will be broken by an occasional Kassam rocket attack just to let everyone that the terrorists are not sleeping, it will put an end to the latest war of chickens.

The sudden and massive missile barrage on Israel last night and today caused no injuries other than emotional shock, and it is not coincidental that the equally massive IDF retaliation Wednesday did not cause any casualties.Gaza sources said three people were injured in the aerial strikes on Rafiah. No one was killed, and terrorists’ smuggling tunnels and not the terrorists themselves were the targets.

Nobody except the simple peasants in Gaza want an escalation of violence to the point that Israel has no choice other than to make Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s dream come true by invading and taking over Gaza, rescuing the average Mohammed on the street from the despotic Hamas regime that has made their lives worse than miserable, although Yasser Arafat gets the credit for having stared the bomb rolling down that road.

Islamic Jihad launched a new round of attacks on Israel as a response to the Israeli military’s killing three of its terrorist after they fired a mortar shell at Israeli soldiers earlier this week..

Iran could have a hand in the decision to strike back since Israel exposed the Islamic Republic regime’s evil hand in trying to arm Hamas so it can carry out a proxy war on Israel. If Israel really wants to retaliate for the missile attacks, Tehran is a better target than Gaza, but that is not going to happen so long as President Barack Obama keeps Iran chattering so no one can hear the sounds of centrifuges spinning out enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb.

Islamic Jihad got much needed PR from its “missile roulette” attacks. No Israeli was injured, so Israel could respond “proportionately” and hit unmanned terrorist posts and underground missile launchers without eliminating a few terrorists. The IDF has to retaliate so that Gaza terrorists would not get a message that they could extend their assault northwards towards Tel Aviv. They are saving that for a future war if it decides to commit suicide.

Lieberman notwithstanding, Israel cannot invade Gaza without nothing worse than malign neglect from its useless friends in the European Union, who as recently as today continue to blame Jerusalem for the perennial humanitarian disaster in Gaza.

Islamic Jihad terrorists are a bunch of chickens. They did nothing but panic the residents of southern Israel, who are not as valuable to the Israeli government as the good citizens of Tel Aviv.

The IDF played chicken but did so out of strength, not weakness.

These chicken wars have taken place before and they will take place again.

The problem is that one day, one of those chickens is going to launch a missile that “misfires” and hits, God forbid, a hospital, kindergarten, shopping center or a family bedroom.

If that happens, the terrorists won’t be able to flee the subsequent invasion of Gaza because chickens can’t fly.

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Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu is a graduate in journalism and economics from The George Washington University. He has worked as a cub reporter in rural Virginia and as senior copy editor for major Canadian metropolitan dailies. Tzvi wrote for Arutz Sheva for several years before joining the Jewish Press.