The Israeli government has come under intense criticism for its swift approval of a ceasefire with Hamas in wake of this week’s flareup on the Gaza border. Opposition forces considered the governments harsh speech against Hamas empty-promise propaganda and words that were not translated into reality. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his administration, who once threatened to terminate Hamas, were quick to accept an Egyptian proposal to calm military escalation in Gaza and arrive to an agreement as soon as possible. “One day Israel will inevitably have to topple the Hamas-run government because it is aggressive against Israel and the Palestinian Authority and governs in a way that will cause the situation in the Gaza Strip to explode,” said former minister Haim Ramon. “Postponing its downfall will make the battle with it harder,” he said. Netanyahu personally defended his position, saying his government published a list of sites bombed by Israeli planes in the Gaza Strip, in response to rockets and missiles fired by Hamas. He said that among the targeted positions was a Hamas weapons manufacturing sight, revealing that the attack crippled the group’s arms-developing capacities. Separately, a number of senior Israeli army and intelligence chiefs, who served in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in the 1970s and 1980s, revealed in a series of statements “the Israeli role in establishing Hamas.” They appeared in a television film broadcast by Channel 10, asserting that certain influential parties in Israeli politics were silent at the time on the establishment of the group led by Sheikh Ahmed Yassine. They were warned, however, by many forces against the establishment of an Islamic political organization similar to the Muslim Brotherhood that harbors clear anti-Israel sentiment.