E-Paper
Why Hamas cannot be allowed to get away by Israel
By targeting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv through rockets on Monday, Hamas has shown that its war-making capability has not diminished despite Israeli bombing.
US President Joseph Biden is travelling to Tel Aviv and Amman tomorrow to politically isolate Hamas terrorist group and commiserate with Israel for the October 7 massacre as the last step before Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) launch a land offensive into Gaza. In Amman, President Biden will meet Israel's neighbours--King Abdullah of Jordan, Egyptian President Abdel Fateh el-Sisi and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas—to seek their views and support for the land offensive.
While Hamas main backer Iran is threatening Israel to refrain from entering Gaza or else Shia Hezbollah will open the second front on the Israel-Lebanon border, the rocket attacks on Jerusalem and Tel Aviv by Hamas on Monday during the Knesset session shows that the war-making capability of the Sunni Salafi terrorist group has not been severely degraded despite pin-pointed aerial bombing by IDF. Also by broadcasting images of hapless hostages, it is quite evident that Hamas' information warfare capability is still potent and its ability to colour global perception in its favour still exists.
Given the fact that Hamas’ war-making potential still exists after nine days of aerial precision-guided bombing by the IDF, Israel has no options but to go into Gaza and destroy Hamas’ war-making infrastructure piece by piece or the Jew nation will be hit again in near future by terrorists. It is quite evident that while Israeli famed intelligence services—Mossad and Shin Bet—were in a Covid lockdown, Hamas was preparing for the terror offensive since 2020. This means that Hamas would also be ready with how to deal with Israeli counter-strike and get away unscathed after the pogrom in South Israel. With no less than 200 Israeli hostages in their captivity, Hamas still holds trump cards and the Netanyahu government will have to bite the bullet to teach the jihadists a lesson. And that the US intelligence with its assets in Qatar and Jordan could not pick up early warning signs of an impending Hamas attack is also a matter of huge concern for the democratic world.
Even though pro-Hamas nations in Middle-East and their Left-liberal supporters in Europe are putting pressure on Israel to ceasefire operations in Gaza, Israel, after getting some 1300 innocents murdered and some 4000 wounded, has no options but to decimate Hamas or the latter will go down in history as being successful in taking on a much larger and manifolds stronger nation-state. It will be a double whammy on the terror victims if Hamas is not made to pay in full for the dastardly attack on South Israel against non-combatants, teenagers, children and toddlers. Simply put, Hamas or Hezbollah or terror groups affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood will attack again if Israel does not teach terrorists a lesson that they will not forget.
Given the fact that Hamas still has war-making capability in Gaza, the IDF’s land offensive into Gaza will be fraught with danger as the terrorists will put up a fight for they have nothing to lose and have their backs against the wall. The fact is that the IDF will have to take Hamas road by road, house by house in Gaza if they want to permanently deactivate the group in the Strip. After indulging in orgy of violence and mayhem on October 7, Hamas cannot be allowed to get away or this will give nefarious ideas to other Islamic jihadists around the world.
