But most of the Israeli cabinet and the new IDF chief of staff, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, favour a much longer ground campaign in Gaza, which would involve sending entire armoured divisions back into the strip, to root out the Hamas fighters who have re-established their strongholds there.

The strikes came two months after a ceasefire deal was brokered to temporarily halt the conflict, with Israel's retaliatory offensive inside Gaza having killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza’s health ministry, and laid waste to the territory home to 2.3 million people, who face severe shortages of medicine, fuel and food.