After nearly seven weeks of bloodshed, terror, and horrors in the war between Israel and Hamas, the four-day pause in the fighting, which was subsequently extended by several days, was urgently needed.

With attention focused on the war in Gaza, an escalation of violence in the West Bank is going largely unnoticed, although at least 147 Palestinians have been killed and 1,430 arrested in clashes with the Israeli security forces since the beginning of the war.

It is a mystery to many of those who have witnessed the complete collapse of Israel’s strategy toward Hamas that its architect, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is still in office and being allowed to conduct the war against the Palestinian Islamist organization.