Egypt reportedly will announce a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel on Tuesday, the same day U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to visit Cairo although neither Israel nor Hamas has expressed any public desire for an unconditional halt in the latest round of violence.

Egyptian media reported the ceasefire will be announced at 6 a.m. and it will take effect three hours later.

Kerry has been almost totally silent since the start of the  current mini-war, but his plan to visit Egypt exactly when the Sisi regime reportedly will announce a ceasefire raises the obvious probability that the not-so-illustrious Secretary of State has been trying once again to “solve” problems in the Middle East, where he has left behind a mess almost every time he visits.

Egypt also would love to repair the damage of the Muslim Brotherhood regime and play the role as peacemaker.

Another bad actor in the ceasefire proposal is Middle East Quartet Envoy Tony Blair , who met al-Sisi on Saturday to orchestrate a ceasefire.

Hamas has said it will not agree to a halt in attacks on Israel without its conditions being set, a bit ludicrous considering it has been literally knocked out and barely has retained consciousness. It also has been welcomed with a thunderous silence by the Arab world towards Hamas’ weakened status after having committed almost every diplomatic and military mistake possible.

Hamas needs the ceasefire if by doing so Egypt will re-open the Rafah crossing and allow free flow of goods and merchandise, the lack of which might have cost Hamas dearly in the eyes of Gazans.

One big benefactor of a ceasefire would be Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who would be in a position to gain more prestige from the international community to dominate the Hamas-Fatah unity government.

Kerry undoubtedly has lunatic ideas that a resumption of the “peace process” with the Hamas-Fatah regime would follow a “halt in hostilities,” as the Egyptian proposal described it.

Based on previous ceasefires, the Egyptian plan will not get very far, if it ever gets to the stage of being proclaimed.

Residents in southern Israel will be after the head of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu if he agrees to a ceasefire, having suffered the aftereffects of dozens of previous declared halts of violence that have lasted from a couple of hours to a couple of months.

The Security Cabinet will meet Tuesday morning to discuss the Egyptian proposal.

After Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009 and the Pillar of Cloud campaign nearly two years ago, Israel agreed to ceasefires after pummeling Hamas, which used the breaks between resume violence to stockpile more missiles and rockets.

The difference for Israel in the current Protective Edge campaign is that the government is in a far better position than before. The world is increasingly fed up with  Hamas, and the IDF has been unusually effective in proving that it has does everything possible to avoid civilian casualties while Hamas has been exposed as doing what it can it increase them. There are few accusations against Israel of “war crimes,” in sharp contrast to the previous counter terrorist campaigns.

As Netanyahu has stated,  Israel defends its citizens against rockets while Hamas defends its rockets at the expense of its civilians.

Israel’s good standing may be the underlying reason why Egypt and Kerry are trying to float a ceasefire proposal now. If Hamas agrees to it, then Israel would finally be cast as the bad guy if it does not along with it. Israel would lose the advantage of the international community’s not having a soapbox to stand on to berate Israel.

Hamas succeeded in wounding two Israelis with rocket fire Monday evening, but the victims were Bedouin sisters, ages 10 and 13 or 15, depending on the source.

One of the girls suffered serious in her stomach, and her sister was hurt with moderate injuries in her leg. Both girls are being treated at Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheva.

The sisters live in rural villages between the Bedouin city of Lakiya and the Jewish community of Omer, located north of Be’er Sheva.

Hamas or other terrorists fired three rockets at the Be’er Sheva area, one of which was downed by the Iron Dome anti-missile system. When there are multiple attacks, the Iron Dome is activated at missiles that are more likely to explode in a  densely populated area.

Will Hamas brag to the Gaza population and to international media that it succeeded in hitting two little Bedouin girls?

Or perhaps it will accuse Israel of purposely letting the rockets explode so that non-Jews could be wounded.

Even Israel does not have the technical capability to carry out that morbid idea since the distance between Omer and Beit Lakiya is only two miles?

There are two gas stations, a McDonald’s outlet and a high-tech industrial center between the two locations.

Sure enough, the mayor of the Bedouin city of Rahat, east of Lakiya, complained that the Bedouin villages in the area ”have become the backyard of the country, which is neglecting them.”

Interesting.

He would be right for complaining that Israel has not made sure that Lakiya and other legal Bedouin villages have proper bomb shelters except for the fact that all houses built with a permit must have a protected room.

Bedouin often do not worry about little details such as getting a legal building permit and are even less concerned with building a protected room, but more interesting is that the mayor woke up only now.

Where was he for the past 10 years when Israel neglected all of the Jews, and Bedouin, who suffered from more than 15,000 rocket and mortar shell attacks from Gaza until the government of Tel Aviv retaliated when the industrial heart of the country and the homes of their owners were threatened by missiles?

One of the key talking points by apologists for Hamas in the current conflict is that it isn’t fair that Israelis under fire have bomb shelters while Palestinians in Gaza don’t have any. Among other factors, the lack of shelters accounts in part for the differences in casualty figures between the two peoples. But somehow none of the talking heads on TV ever ask why there are no bomb shelters in Gaza.

There’s no question that Hamas is outgunned by Israel. The Islamist terror group that still rules over Gaza has thousands of rockets, but Palestinians eager to cheer news of Israeli casualties have been disappointed as the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system has knocked down most of the rockets shot over the border from Gaza at Israeli cities in the hope that carnage will result. But even though Israel has gone to unprecedented lengths to avoid killing Palestinian civilians as it attacks the missile launch sites and Hamas command centers and ammunition storage areas that are embedded in packed neighborhood and especially in or around schools, mosques, and clinics, some civilians have died. Given that the Israelis have pounded the Islamists with nearly a thousand strikes this week, the approximately 150 Palestinian fatalities is actually pretty low. But still, fewer Palestinians would have died had there been places for them to seek refuge during the fighting.

The assumption is that the Hamas-run strip is too poor to afford building shelters and safe rooms for its civilians, a point that adds to the impression that the Palestinians are helpless victims who deserve the sympathy if not the help of the world in fending off Israel’s assault on Hamas’s arsenal.

But the assumption is utterly false. Gaza’s tyrants have plenty of money and material to build shelters. And they have built plenty of them. They’re just not for the people of Gaza.

As is well known, Gaza is honeycombed with underground structures from one end of the strip to the other. This doesn’t only refer to the more than 1,400 tunnels that have connected Gaza to Egypt through which all sorts of things—including rockets, ammunition, building materials as well as consumer goods–came into the strip until the military government in Cairo stopped the traffic. The chief problem facing the Israel Defense Forces in this campaign is the same one they faced in 2008 and 2012 when they previously tried to temporarily silence the rocket fire. Hamas’s leaders and fighters are kept safe in a warren of shelters build deep underneath Gaza. There is also plenty of room there for its supply of thousands of rockets and other armaments. Moreover, they are also connected by tunnels that crisscross the length of that independent Palestinian state in all but name ruled by Hamas. Indeed, when you consider the vast square footage devoted to these structures, there may well be far more shelter space per square mile in Gaza than anyplace in Israel.

If these structures were opened up to the civilians of Gaza, there is little doubt that would lower the casualty figures. Indeed, if the leaders of Gaza and their armed cadres emerged from their safe havens under the ground and let the civilians take cover there they could then show some real courage. But lowering casualties isn’t part of Hamas’s action plan that is predicated on sacrificing as many of their own people as possible in order to generate foreign sympathy. Instead, they cower behind the civilians, shooting missiles next to schools, storing ammunition in mosques (as today’s explosion in Gaza illustrated) and, as I previously noted, are actually urging civilians to act as human shields against Israeli fire on Hamas strongholds. Indeed, they have enlisted the people of Gaza as part of their misinformation campaign in which they attempt to conceal the presence of missile launching or masked, armed Hamas fighters in civilian neighborhoods.

Long Island, New York beachgoers were furious over the weekend as a plane towed a banner with a swastika, a peace sign and the Star of David.

The “Raelian Movement,” which every year tries to convince people that the swastika was an honorable and ancient Hindu symbol before Hitler rose to power.

The same movement also thinks that you and I and all other human beings actually were created by extraterrestrials.

ABC reported, “Some beachgoers say there’s just no way to rehabilitate a symbol that provokes such strong feelings.”

However, the Raelian Movement does raise an interesting possibility that maybe extraterrestrial created Nazis and terrorists. If so, why does anyone want to find life on Mars?

International condemnation of Israel is beginning to mount for its supposed “disproportionate response” to Hamas’ latest and escalated missile and rocket war on Israel, but Western leaders do not state what exactly is a “proportionate” response.

The United States, United Nations and the European Union constantly take the lead in pleading for Israel to show “restraint” and not to “escalate” violence after Palestinian Authority attacks, whether from Judea and Samaria, controlled by Mahmoud Abbas, or from Gaza.

What really ruffles the feathers of the Western bleeding hearts is that Israel kills more terrorists and civilian shields in Gaza than the number of Israeli citizens and soldiers who are killed by rocket and missile fire from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other “unity government” allies.

“The rising death toll has sparked international concern over the proportionality of Israel’s response to rocket fire from Gaza,” The LA Times reported Sunday. “The rockets have struck deeper into Israel than in past conflicts, but have caused only one serious civilian injury. There have been no Israeli deaths as a direct result of a rocket strike.”

It simply is not a fair fight, according to the media establishment and the bleeding heart lefties. Hamas fires inaccurate missiles while Israel uses pinpoint aerial bombing raids to eliminate terrorists.

According to that logic, when Hamas fires rockets that land in open areas in Israel, Israel should fire at open areas in Gaza.

Hamas got “lucky” on Sunday when shrapnel from a rocket seriously injured a 16-year-old boy in Ashkelon. Presumably, Israel should have responded by seriously injuring an innocent 16-year-old Arab.

When Hamas terrorists kidnapped three Israeli yeshiva teenagers a month ago in the Hebron area, Israel promptly clamped a curfew on dozens of Palestinian Authority villages in a search for the boys, who more than two weeks later were found murdered.

Before their bodies were discovered. Israel was vilified for inflicting supposed  “collective punishment” on the Palestinian Authority by looking for the murderers. Days after the bodies were found, Jewish hoodlums barbarically kidnapped and burned to death a 16-year-old Arab from Jerusalem.

The depraved crime was a wrenching punch in Israel’s collective gut, but according to Western logic, the Israeli government itself should have carried out the unthinkable act of kidnapping three Arabs and killing them.

No one would suggest such a horrid thought.

And no one should anyone suggest that Israel react to every missile and rocket attack on its citizens by responding with the same number of rockets and the same results.

A proportionate response to the intention to kill is to kill before the intention is fulfilled.

Why don’t police in American cities, or in any other civilized place in the world, shoot and kill someone trying to kill them? Shouldn’t they wait until the killer “succeeds” before responding?

Of course, then it is too late, but that is a small detail that would ruin the principle of a “proportionate response.”

The real reason that “proportionate response” applies primarily to Israel is the world cannot stand seeing Jews have the upper hand.

Some of the worst condemnations come from American Jews, for whom Israel is supposed to be a nice doggie that woofs when his master, not God but the American liberal Jewish community, says, “Sit.”

They can’t stand Israel being anything that is not an expression of their own attempt at being good Americans by encouraging a State of Israel that doesn’t upset the apple cart of the “loyal American Jew” who needs to be trusted by his non-Jewish government. Israel must not do anything that jeopardizes American Jews’ standing as good loyal Americans. Israel is supposed to be nothing but a safe haven for other Jews who suffer from anti-Semitism in Russia and France, among other countries.

Israel must not be too religious, lest it make it difficult for the top-heavy non-Orthodox American Jewish community to identify with it and according to the American Constitution.

Israel as a nice doggie makes the liberal Jewish American establishment feel safe from anti-Semitism.

A disproportionate response by Israel would make Israel too strong for any American administration, whether headed by Obama , Reagan, Clinton, Bush or whoever is next, to call the shots in the Middle East.

And what would happen if Israel played nice doggie and refrained from killing those who try to kill Israelis?

The Israeli Air Force has eliminated thousands of rockets in Gaza. If they were still in the terrorists’ stockpile, it is more probable, and still is possible, that one or two would kill Israelis. Lots of us.

And you know what the international response would be?

Gee, you see what happens when you don’t sit down and make peace with Hamas.

Arf, arf.

(In the CNN clip below from 2009, during Operation Cast Lead, then-New York Mayor Bloomberg said at 1:00 in the video, “There is no such thing as a proportionate response to terrorism.”)

Since this round of rocket attacks began against Israel, the average Israeli citizen has asked a simple and straightforward question, “Why is Israel still supply Gaza with electricity as they fire rockets upon us?”

The situation is quite surreal, especially since Gaza (or the Palestinian Authority) still hasn’t paid its electric bill.

Israelis understand that at some point the Gazan population would quite possibly demand or force Hamas to stop shooting rockets at Israel, if presented with the right combination of non-lethal incentives.

There are reports that PM Netanyahu killed the idea, saying the lawyers won’t permit it.

Well, what Netanyahu isn’t prepared to do, Hamas will do for him.

70,000 Gazans in Khan Younis and Dir Elbalach are now without electricity after a misfired Hamas rocket landed in Kissufim and knocked out the primary electric wires to their area.

It will be an interesting experiment to see who blinks first.

Will Israel fix the high tension overhead power cables or allow Hamas to fix them, or will Hamas be forced to stop firing when the its population begins to revolt after days and perhaps even weeks without electricity?

We’ll wait and see.

Update: PM Netanyahu spoke with Israel Electric Company (IEC) head Yiftach Ron-Tal, and told him he should not risk the lives of any electric company employees to fix the power lines.

As a result, the IEC has made a decision to fix the power cables, but not at this moment, as with the rockets flying down, its too dangerous to send workers there. When it is safer, they will go there and fix the problem.

The IDF escorted 670 Arabs with dual nationality from foreign countries out of Gaza and away from the Hamas war front and safely in to Israel Sunday morning.

The dual citizens left through the Erez Crossing, the northern border of Gaza, and include those with citizenship form the United States, Sweden, Norway, Belgium and other European countries.

Their home embassies assisted in the evacuation, which may have been connected with the possibility of an IDF ground incursion and the army’s warning to northern Gaza to leave their homes in advance of a massive round of bombing of terrorist targets.