Weekly Commentary: Israel Shouldn't Give Hamas Years To Prepare To Attack
Dr. Aaron Lerner 2 August, 2018

Next week the Security Cabinet will discuss schemes that would allow Hamas
and the other groups in the Gaza Strip continue doing literally everything
and anything in preparation to attack Israel at a time and place of their
choosing.

Yes. Anything and everything.

Sure, we will dutifully add military sites we manage to identify to our ever
growing target bank. But we won't destroy any of them except within the
framework of some tit-for-tat exchange of fire.

And even then we might avoid destroying really important sites in order to
prevent having a tit-for-tat exchange get out of hand.

To date, for example, we have apparently yet to destroy any site in our
target bank associated with the longer range rockets that can reach Tel
Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport, and beyond.
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It is extremely difficult to assess what capabilities Hamas and the others
may develop under a quiet for quiet arrangement extended over a number of
years.

So far we've done a miserable job assessing their capabilities. We only
realized they had rockets that could reach Tel Aviv when they actually
launched them and we were clueless what Hamas could do with the tunnels.

I frankly fear that the projections of the potential costs of quiet for
quiet are being tailored to support it.

Gaza is not Lebanon.

We talk about evacuating the population near Lebanon in the even of war.

There's too many people within range of Gaza.

And a huge number of strategic sites: ports, industrial facilities, military
facilities etc.

If you took five smart Israeli reserve officers and gave them a month to
plan what they would prepare to do if they were running Hamas and had three
years of quiet for quiet they would come up with a program that would stun
everyone.

Can we afford to be so smug as to assume that Hamas can't put together and
execute a similar program?

A reminder: there is absolutely no guaranty who or what will be in power in
Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon or Saudi Arabia three years from now.

We could find ourselves facing a multi-front nightmare with Gaza serving as
a strategic forward position in a battle to destroy the Jewish State.

Quiet may indeed be a nice thing for a couple of years.

But can we afford to pay the potential price?
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