Attacks stopped shortly before midnight, though the calm was broken once by a Palestinian mortar shell that exploded in the Eshkol region at 9:30 a.m.Between that attack and Thursday evening, no mortars or rockets targeted the South.Officials said that there have been no negotiations with Hamas, but that a message was sent saying that an end to rocket attacks would result in an end to Israeli air strikes.“Exacting a cost from Hamas forms the basis for Israeli deterrence,” Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon said in Tel Aviv on Thursday, according to Channel 10. The minister added that if the country did not have deterrence, rocket attacks would be a daily occurrence.“The Gaza Strip is a complex situation,” Ya’alon told a conference of the Commercial and Industrial Club. “We provide them with electricity, which they use to create rockets and fire them at us. We provide them with water and energy, which they use against us.”Ya’alon called for Gaza to desalinate its own water, produce its own energy and link its infrastructures to Egypt.“Then the situation would be clearer,” he said.Iran is the main cause of instability in the Middle East, Ya’alon said.