Last night's incident in Gaza was a routine operation gone wrong, not an assassination attempt that would have escalated the situation.
The unit executing the op, Sayeret Maglan, routinely installs devices necessary for the collection of SIGINT beyond enemy lines.
The unit executing the op, Sayeret Maglan, routinely installs devices necessary for the collection of SIGINT beyond enemy lines.
Some of the communications equipment left behind in Gaza by the IDF unit that carried out last night's failed operation. Photo by Ismail Abu Ammar 
Something went wrong & the unit was detected. In the ensuing firefight & ex-filtration, 7 Hamas members were killed & 7 injured. The deputy commander of Maglan, a Lt. Colonel, was killed & another officer in the unit was injured. Both Israeli casualties are Druze.
Netanyahu has no interest in escalating the situation in Gaza right now, after he paid a heavy public price for allowing Qatari funds to flow into Gaza to pay for salaries of Hamas civil servants to avoid the outbreak of another round of fighting.
An operation to capture or assassinate a Hamas commander would have triggered a response from Hamas that could have easily escalated into a war. Given Netanyahu's costly efforts to avoid a war, such an operation makes no sense at this time.
If Netanyahu wanted war, he could have just blocked the transfer of Qatari funds to Gaza, as Israel has done in the past & let pressure and misery in Gaza to build up. A war would have erupted & the Israeli public, taught to view Hamas as a terrorist actor that can only be dealt
with through violence, wouldn't have blamed Netanyahu for such a war. We saw this pattern in previous conflicts: Israeli leaders pay a price for being 'soft' on 'terrorism' but they do not pay a price for doing nothing to prevent conflict or to advance peace.
Correction: The injured Israeli officer in the failed Khan Younis operation is not Druze, only the killed officer was a member of this religious community.
