On November 21, a Hamas operative opened fire in Jerusalem, killing the twenty-six-year-old immigrant Eli Kay and injuring four others. On Saturday, another terrorist stabbed a civilian. These attacks come on the heels of others—not to mention the much larger one planned by Hamas in the West Bank and foiled by the IDF in October. Alex Fishman warns that these are signs of worse threats to come, and he fears that Israel is playing into the terrorist group’s hands by not taking the fight to its enclave in Gaza:
During the six months that passed since the May conflict between Israel and Gaza’s militant factions, the Israeli government has been patting itself on the back for having allegedly achieved “deterrence” against the terrorists.
This false sense of security is akin to the feeling that was prevalent in Israel after the Second Lebanon War in 2006, when the government believed Hizballah was left with nothing but a few rusting missiles.Hamas, meanwhile, has grown stronger over the past six months, and has in fact worked tirelessly to replenish its weapons depots following the war in May. The terrorist organization has also started building and using advanced weaponry, such as UAVs and drones, and is experimenting with different kinds of missiles. Only recently Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system shot down a drone with explosives attached to it over the Mediterranean Sea. Gaza is clearly readying itself for another war.
The current calm, however, allows [Gaza’s ruler] Yahya Sinwar to strengthen Hamas’s militant wing, where the majority of the organizations’ finances have been funneled to over the last six months. For Sinwar, improving the lives of Gaza’s citizens is nothing but a bonus to help him maintain control over the enclave and its people. And for Hamas as a whole, the calm is nothing but a tool to stall until it’s ready for another round of fighting against Israel.
Meanwhile, the current attempts by the United States and Egypt to reconcile Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah with Hamas in order to form a Palestinian unity government that would reach an agreement with Israel, are nothing but a fever dream of the U.S. State Department and Egyptian intelligence.
Read more on Ynet: https://www.ynetnews.com/article/rj7fgdxkf