From Ben White’s Al Jazeera English article “What a ‘period of calm’ looks like in the Occupied Territories“:
(Image: Al Jazeera English)
White concludes:
if or when there is another assault by Israel on the Gaza Strip, the Israeli government and many in the West will seek to emphasise the “rockets” narrative once again. So remember this data, and note what the Israeli army has been doing when – in the words of Israel’s own consul general in Los Angeles – “for the last three months, there hasn’t been a rocket fired from Gaza”.
This is a great point. Even while Israel was incessantly squawking about the home-made rockets propelled from Gaza into Israel, that did cause substantial and genuine fear, Israel was being far more destructive in Gaza before its 2008-2009 assault. I recall that in just two days in March, 2008, Israel killed 120 Palestinians. I think Larry Derfner noted that in those years before the full-scale assault, the kill ratio was about 50:1 (more like 100:1 during the assault). The word “calm” is almost always used in this Israel-centric manner.