Peace, Peace When There is No Peace (Jeremiah 6:14, 8:11)

Gaza rocket squads barraged southern Israel early Thursday, after Israeli undercover forces killed four Palestinian militants in the West Bank. The new violence shattered a recent lull in Gaza fighting and highlighted the fragility of efforts to move Israel and the territory's Islamic Hamas rulers toward an informal truce. About a dozen rockets was fired late Wednesday and early Thursday, Israeli security forces said. Two of them struck a warehouse and soccer field in the rocket-weary Israeli town of Sderot, but no one was injured, Israeli officials said. Israeli aircraft struck a loaded rocket launcher early Thursday, but no Palestinian injuries were reported. The rocket barrage from Gaza was practically a given after Israeli undercover forces opened fire on a car in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on Wednesday, killing the local Islamic Jihad commander, Mohammed Shehadeh, and three other wanted men. The Israeli military said Shehadeh planned suicide bombings that killed dozens of Israelis.

On a tour of the Gaza border area on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned IDF troops that the battle with Hamas will most likely “bring an escalation beyond what we have seen so far, before we reach a period of calm.” "We are not in a state of calm with Hamas, we are in ongoing activity meant to stop Kassam fire. There is no change in what we are doing," Barak said in comments that once again cast doubts on Arab media reports in recent days that Egypt has managed to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas.

IDF troops and elite police commandos operating in Bethlehem on Wednesday evening killed four top terrorists with the Islamic Jihad militia, including the planner of last week’s shooting massacre in a prominent Jerusalem yeshiva, Palestinian sources claim. While attempting to arrest the armed fugitives, who made up the Islamic Jihad's leadership in the city, the troops came under fire near Bethlehem’s main government building, and killed all four in a gun battle. The four-man terror cell was known to be in direct contact with Islamic Jihad's leadership in Syria as well as with Hizbullah. Shehadeh has been wanted by Israel for the past eight years for involvement in planning and executing terror attacks in which Israelis were killed and wounded.

• JJ Commentary: There will be no peace for Israel until Jesus returns. Any sounds of peace are inherently false as Islam continues to seek its total annihilation.