Tentative calm was restored overnight between Monday and Tuesday along the Gaza Strip border, following a two-day conflagration between the Israel Defense Forces and the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). The violence erupted on Sunday after the IDF killed a PIJ terrorist who had planted an explosive device along the security fence. Israel subsequently was targeted with more than two dozen rockets, to which Jerusalem responded by taking the rare step of eliminating two PIJ members with air strikes in Syria. On Monday, the PIJ upped the ante, launching more than 50 projectiles toward the Jewish state, to which the IDF retaliated with strikes across Gaza. Tensions had already been mounting between Israel and Hamas, which rules the Palestinian enclave, with the sides exchanging intermittent fire throughout February. The latest flare-up also comes on the backdrop of Hamas’s renewed launching of balloon-borne explosive devices into Israeli territory. The uptick in violence prompted Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to warn of a possible large-scale military operation. “We will do what it takes to bring back total security for the [Israeli] residents of the South,” he asserted. “I only go to war as a last option, but we have prepared something you can’t even imagine.… Woe to Hamas and Islamic Jihad when that day comes! It’s their choice.” International mediators have been working for over a year to forge a long-term cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, although negotiations have reportedly reached a standstill. Israel’s overriding policy has long been to hold Hamas responsible for all attacks emanating from the territory it controls, although Jerusalem has recently started marking a distinction between Gaza’s rulers and the PIJ. Analysts attribute the apparent shift to Israel’s dual goals of exposing Tehran’s role in fostering instability in Gaza even as the Jewish state attempts to reach a truce agreement with Hamas.