Hamas rejected the Egyptian-mediated ceasefire proposal and continued its rocket fire on the civilian population after the ceasefire went into effect Tuesday morning.

Israel’s Security Cabinet responded by resuming targeted airstrikes on the terror infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.

A former high-ranking Israeli officer told CBN News the ceasefire proposal backs Hamas into a corner. If they reject this very public offer, then Israel will be able to renew its military operation with the backing of the international community.

“Now if Hamas rejects the Egyptian proposal, if Hamas continues to shoot rockets at Israeli cities, we are prepared to continue the military operation and to intensify as need be to protect our people,” Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told CBN News.

Diplomatically, it also pits Hamas against other players in the region such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the U.S.

On the military front, according to an Israeli official, Hamas sustained a significant blow and failed in almost all its objectives, in large part due to the effectiveness of the Iron Dome anti-missile system.

“Every time they’re launching a rocket at the State of Israel, they are meeting a brick wall called the Iron Dome,” the official said.

Yet without a military victory, Hamas seeks to win on another battlefield. Hollywood screenwriter Dan Gordon spoke with CBN News as a civilian before being called up as a reservist.

“Hamas views journalism as war,” he said.

Gordon believes Hamas may have lost on the battlefield, but it does much better on the world stage.

“The other part of their campaign is world opinion and it’s quite insidious. It’s to engage in active terror while claiming the mantle of victimhood,” he explained.

“The object of that is to turn world opinion so that even though they’re losing militarily, world opinion will say we really have to stop the Israelis from committing those horrible acts of barbarism against the peace loving Hamas and that unfortunately [allows] segments of the media [to] actually unwittingly act as enablers,” he said.

Now the terror group will have to deal on the diplomatic stage and with a peace offer on the table, it puts more political pressure on Hamas from the international community to accept the proposal.

Reprinted with permission from CBN News