On Monday evening, Hamas in Gaza announced that a new ceasefire had been reached with Israel brokered by Mohammed al-Emadi, Qatar's emissary to the Gaza Strip.
The ceasefire agreement came after al-Emadi promised Hamas that Qatar would double its monthly financial aid to Gaza to $ 17 million.
Roughly $ 10 million of this amount will go to Palestinian families hardest hit by the huge economic crisis in Gaza, while $ 7 million will be spent fighting the coronavirus crisis which is spreading in the southern coastal enclave.
Qatar will also supply medical equipment to Gaza and 20,000 coronavirus test kits to reduce the growing number of COVID-19 cases in the enclave.
Another reason for Hamas' decision to accept a ceasefire with Israel after continuously launching incendiary balloons loaded with explosives and combustible materials in the direction of southern Israel over the past three weeks, has been a change in Israeli strategy to combat the balloon terror that has devastated hundreds of acres of forest and farmland in the Gaza belt.
Although the Israeli military is now in the possession of a laser system that can shoot down the balloons before they reach Israel the new weapon is only covering a limited area along the border with Gaza.
In addition, the Israeli military last month began treating balloon terror as the equivalent of rocket fire on southern Israel, hitting over 100 Hamas military targets in Gaza over the past three weeks.
Those military targets included 35 weapon factories and 30 underground workshops where Hamas produces missiles. The Israeli Air Force (IAF), furthermore, bombed 10 sites from which Hamas launched unmanned aerial vehicles or drones to terrorize southern Israel and also bombed Hamas military naval facilities while destroying more than 20 Hamas observation posts.
The change in the military strategy against the Palestinian terror factions in Gaza has been compared in Israel to the way the IAF responds to any attempt by Iran to create a new front against the Jewish state in Syria.
On Monday, for example, a new IAF airstrike again struck the T-4 base near the Syrian city of Homs killing three Syrian soldiers and 7 Iranian operatives as well as a Syrian civilian.
Brigade General Hidai Zilberman, a spokesman for the IDF, told reporters that not only the vigorous military response to the ballooning terror was responsible for Hamas' decision to agree to a ceasefire but also Israel’s economic sanctions against Gaza.
Israel closed the Keren Shalom border crossing where goods and fuel were delivered to Gaza on August 13 and drastically reduced the fishing zone off the coast of Gaza.
The cessation of fuel supply caused a major shortage of electricity in Gaza where the population increasingly is turning against Hamas. Gaza has only one power plant that runs entirely on diesel fuel.
Israeli commentators say the loss of support among the Palestinian population in Gaza is the main reason Hamas agreed to a ceasefire.
Hamas used the coronavirus crisis in Gaza as leverage against Israel and warned last week that if Israel did not lift the blockade, "not only the Palestinian population would suffer" - a veiled threat that Hamas will again target the Israeli civilian population living in the Gaza frontier area of southern Israel.
Officials dealing with the escalating coronavirus crisis in the Jewish state previously warned that Israel's already overburdened health system would collapse if coronavirus patients from Gaza would come to Israeli hospitals for medical treatment.
Hamas used the growing coronavirus crisis in Gaza as a weapon against Israel, said Dan Diker of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) on Sunday.
Diker is head of the JCPA's Political Warfare and Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Program.
By presenting the growing coronavirus crisis as a result of the Israeli sanctions against Hamas, Hamas is seeking to turn public opinion against Israel and to regain support from its own population, Diker said.
The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas came about after a series of telephone conversations between Ishmail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas's political bureau, and Sheikh Muhammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatar's foreign minister.
After the ceasefire announcement, Al-Emadi, Qatar's envoy in Gaza, praised the leadership of Hamas, which he said had shown responsibility and that the appalling condition of the population in the Gaza Strip had contributed to the decision to come to a cease-fire.
However, Diker says Hamas leaders only agreed to stop the renewed violence against Israel, which included rocket fire and organized violent rallies near the security fence on the Gaza border after realizing that there could be a popular uprising against the terrorist movement and that their regime was in danger.
Hamas now presents the ceasefire as a victory over Israel, claiming that "the resistance front has broken the blockade."
"The resistance was able to force the enemy to accept our conditions," Hamas-affiliated political analyst Khaled al-Najjar said on Monday in Gaza.
Observers in Israel now think it is a matter of time before another round of violence will begin.
Indeed, on Wednesday, a Palestinian Arab man tried to infiltrate Israel armed with a large knife and an explosive device but was apprehended by the IDF.
Another sign that nothing has changed in Hamas’ ways was a meeting between a high-level Hamas delegation led by Ishmail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’ political desk, and representatives of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah in Lebanon earlier this week.
Haniyeh is increasingly presenting himself as a regional leader who has access to governments belonging to the ‘resistance axis’ consisting of Turkey, Iran, Syria and several Iranian-supported terror groups.
The Hamas leader also got a red-carpet reception from Turkey’s dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan who is supporting Islamist groups in Israel and Gaza and is firmly on Hamas’ side in its prolonged conflict with Israel.