In an effort to have Israel ease the 3 year-long devastating blockade on the Gaza Strip and not give an excuse to have the Israeli military sweep into the Gaza Strip, representatives of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Islamic Jihad, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hamas declared that they will stop rocket attacks into Israel after considering their situation in several meetings.

Hamas has ceased rocket attacks against Israel as it does not want to attract the Israeli military to swarm into the Gaza Strip nor does it want to interrupt the sympathetic support for the Palestinians in the strip.

The Fatah, a major Palestinian political party, did not join the meetings; parts of the Fatah are suspected to have been responsible for the recent rocket attacks. This is not genuine peace, the representative of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Saleh Zeidan, stated that “we are not stopping the resistance against Israel..we are taking into consideration the interests of our people.”

These Palestinian parties have been pressured by numerous factors and other countries. The Russian government have warned Hamas about the threat of Israel’s military retaliation if rocket attacks further continue. The Egyptian government also put much more pressure on the ‘radical’ Palestinians to stop the rocket attacks in order to prevent war. Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip has deprived the Palestinian economy and effectively killed off 98% of the industry located in the small, barely habitable strip of land.

The 1.5 million population must survive on a feeble stream of medical and food supplies coming in from outside the border of the Gaza Strip while even more rely on the tunnels running under to Egypt to gain necessary supplies.

Israel had specifically targetted these kinds of tunnels and remaining factories whenever a rocket attack came from the Gaza Strip, they did so with air strikes when a 30 year old male Thai worker was killed by a rocket attack on March 18th.

Today, Israel loosened the blockade just a little bit. It allowed Palestinian imports to be shipped to the Gaza Strip that had been ordered by Palestinian businessmen up to more than two years ago. Twenty specific cargos held goods for cloth shops, factories, and other textile businesses.

Most of these goods were spoiled; the clothes due to the damp were ruined and businessmen already in the miserable economic setting of the Gaza Strip could not cover for their profit loss as they had no insurance or cover on their 2-3 year old shipments, in addition to the humiliating shipments they’ve received, they had also paid for the storage of these goods for those years which ruined them in the first place.

Israel since 2007 has put a seige on the Gaza Strip when Hamas officially took over, this physical, economic blockade has angered many in the Islamic world who support Palestinians and had even peturbed a few human rights organizations after they saw the extent of “inhuman damage” to the quarantined Palestinians.

Israel has emphasized that any rocket attack from the Gaza Strip will have the blockade tighten even more, whether it’s from Hamas or any other group which has clearly worried the groups in the Gaza Strip and pushed them to reconsider their situation and disadvantages in juxtapose with Israel’s far superior position.