The ceasefire in the Gaza Strip has been fragile since US President Donald Trump willed it into existence earlier this month.

And on Tuesday, the cords keeping war from breaking out again in Gaza frayed further, as Hamas operatives opened fire on IDF troops in Rafah, nine days after it carried an attack in the same city that left two Israeli soldiers dead.

Tuesday’s attack in Rafah came as Israel’s patience was already wearing dangerously thin.

After Hamas failed to return any bodies of slain hostages for a week, it said on Monday night that it would hand over remains it had found that day. Instead, Israel discovered that the casket contained the partial remains of Ofir Tzarfati, a hostage whose body was already recovered by the military in early December 2023.

If that wasn’t enough, an Israeli drone caught Hamas staging the fake “discovery” of Tzarfati’s remains on Monday afternoon in eastern Gaza City in front of the Red Cross.

Even the Red Cross, which maintains strict neutrality as a guiding principle, issued a rare statement calling Hamas’s fakery “unacceptable.”

Hamas has handed over the remains of only 15 of the 28 dead hostages, and done so in piecemeal fashion, and Israel insists that the terror group has access to many of the remaining bodies and is intentionally dragging its feet in returning them.

Hamas had failed to return a single slain hostage in the first 72 hours of the ceasefire, instead returning a first group of four bodies hours after it expired, in violation of both Trump’s 20-point plan and the one-page implementation document signed by Israel in Sharm El-Sheik.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been champing at the bit to respond in force, but Trump and his top advisers have made it........

© The Times of Israel