Bibi Netanyahu: “Whoever hurts us, we will hit them with great strength.”

Bibi Netanyahu said the following at today’s Cabinet Meeting:

“Over the Sabbath we hit Hamas in a significant way and hard. Our policy is clear: Whoever hurts us, we will hit them with great strength. This is what we did yesterday. The IDF dealt Hamas the harshest blow since Operation Protective Edge. I hope that they got the message; if not, they will get it later.

 

I heard it being said that Israel has agreed to a ceasefire that would allow the continuation of terrorism by incendiary kites and balloons; this is incorrect. We are not prepared to accept any attacks against us and we will respond appropriately.

 

Yesterday I spoke with US President Donald Trump. We discussed security and diplomatic issues in light of developments in the region, with Syria and Iran first and foremost, of course.

 

As you know, these issues will also come up at the presidents’ summit in Helsinki. Of course I discussed them with President Putin last Wednesday. I thanked President Trump for his strong policy against Iran because since this policy has been taken, we have seen a great effect on – and inside – Iran. President Trump clearly reiterated his commitment to the security of Israel and his willingness to help the State of Israel in various fields and, of course, I thanked him for that.

 

Today I will be pleased to host Nick Malyshev, the Head of the OECD Regulatory Division. He has come to Israel in order to present a report on the regulatory situation in Israel. The OECD has found that Israel has achieved much in reducing regulation in recent years, thanks to the many efforts all of us here have led together. We will continue to work to cut bureaucracy for the citizens of Israel.”

Jewish Home Receives Direct Rocket Hit, IDF to Increase Intensity Against Hamas

With a missile directly hitting a house in Sderot over Shabbat, injuring the family inside, the IDF has been ordered to increase the intensity of its responses to Hamas rocket fire on southern Israel.

Prime Minister Netanyahu said the following: “In consultation with the Minister of Defense, the Chief-of-Staff and the top security command of the State of Israel, we have decided on strong action against Hamas terrorism. The IDF has struck Hamas with the hardest blow since Operation Protective Edge and we will increase the strength of our attacks as necessary.”

Hamas and Islamic Jihad has now claimed they have reached a ceasefire with Israel.  With over 180 rockets fired at Israel since Friday, Israeli officials are waiting to see “facts on the ground” before ruling an intensifying of the IDF’s next moves.

 

PACKERS CORNER: Gaza Situation is Intolerable

With all the fake news in America right now about the family separating thing, its a good time to take a break and read about current events in Israel!
Two nights ago, 45 projectiles were shot from Hamas-controlled Gaza at Israel. The Iron Dome rocked the house and no one was injured. However, clearly an intolerable situation. Alot of warnings coming from Israeli leaders about the threat of escalation and possible Israeli attempt to end the Hamas rule in Gaza once and for all. Keep in mind, the burning kites keep coming as well and setting fires causing widespread damage. Situation not at all sustainable. All logic/good judgement would lead Hamas to quickly deescalate the situation – probably won’t happen. On the Israeli side of things, every time the Government considers/threatens to disrupt the Yeshiva students and their studies with threats of drafting them to the army, there is a war. So let’s hope they back off…and soon.
This week also saw the demolition of Jewish houses and property in Kfar Tapuach Maarav (West Tapuach). Situation contains many “legal” similarities to the recent very unfortunate destruction in Netiv Ha-Avot in the Gush Etzion region, south of Jerusalem – Supreme Court ruling, no actual arab owners of the land, houses destroyed and the (VERY IMPORTANTLY!!) area now being developed LEGALLY into a large and thriving Jewish community and a serious strengthening of the Jewish Presence in the area. Surveys conducted as a result of the lawsuit from left-wing agitators have determined enough state land for the potential construction of thousands of residential units.
Unlike Netiv Ha-Avot, West Tapuach is fantastically strategic for both the State of Israel and particularly for the “settlement enterprise”. It physically connects the city of Ariel (with its University) to the community of Kfar Tapuach and the crucial Tapuach traffic junction. Without control of the junction, the fledgling Jewish communities to the north (Itamar, Elon Moreh, Har Bracha) and east (Migdalim) would be cut off from the rest of the country and most likely be unsustainable.
In short, as in Netiv Ha-Avot, despite very sad and unnecessary scenes, the future in West Tapuach is quite bright.
Finally, some decisions were handed down by an Israeli court this week about the use of torture to extract confessions. The case involved the firebombing killing of an arab family in the village of Duma almost 3 years ago. Two Jewish suspects are accused of participating – one adult actively and a minor supposedly involved in the planning. They have been held in jail for years and repeatedly tortured. Both have subsequently confessed to involvement. In Israel, the rule is that confessions obtained through torture are not admissible in court. However, when religious Jews are accused and arabs are the victims, that rule doesn’t apply, apparently. So the court ruled that the minor’s confessions will be tossed, but the adults will be used against him. There can’t be a soul in the world who thinks this is actually a form of justice, but everyone has their own political agenda, so no real surprises here. The trial is upcoming. As of now, there doesn’t appear to be any other evidence linking the suspects to the crime. Bizarre? If you think so, you are clearly not paying attention. There’s much more reason to doubt the case against the defendants, but suffice it to say – its quite weak.
Before the houses in Netiv Ha-Avot were destroyed and the same for Amona and now West Tapuach, the “right-wing” government claimed that they were obligated to adhere to the rulings of the Supreme Court and there was no way around it. This week, Prime Minister Netanyahu indefinitely pushed off the the destruction of 2 illegal arab encampments that HAVE BEEN ORDERED BY THE SUPREME COURT!!! So…..yeah.
The reason given for the delay is the scheduled arrival of Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt later this week to push their peace plan. This is most likely why no building in Jerusalem has been announced either. Let’s wait and see what happens after they leave.

Hamas Fires 45 Rockets at Jewish Communities, IDF Responds Hitting Multiple Targets

After weeks of build up by Hamas in using “protestors” to breach Israel’s security fence,  some missile barrages, and flaming kites to terrorize Israeli citizens, the radical Islamic terror organization shot 45 rockets at Israel over night. Seven rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome.  While there have not be serious physical injuries, many civilians are living in fear and inside bunkers.

Rockets were aimed at schools and other civilian locations.



The IDF responded, hitting multiple targets throughout the Gaza strip.

The real question is whether this is the beginning of something larger or a one-off volley meant to apply pressure on Israel.  Ultimately Hamas keep applying pressure, after all they promised to liberate “Palestine.” Any moment of laxity will enable those in the Palestinian populace that already question Hamas’ degenerative rule to gain a real foothold.

 

Why don’t we defend ourselves?

Originally Posted in Abu Yehuda.

Great swaths of land in the Negev desert near the Gaza strip, agricultural land and nature preserves formerly the habitats of numerous endangered plant and animal species, have been reduced to ash and smoke by Palestinian fire-kites and balloon-borne incendiary devices during the past few weeks. The entire area is blackened with the smoke from fires that are being set faster than Israeli firefighters can put them out.

Our powerful army dithers, ever pursuing its apparent goal of fighting wars without hurting anyone. Today I understand that a car belonging to one of the leaders of the bombing campaign was destroyed by an “airstrike,” probably a drone-launched missile. The car was parked and empty. That’ll teach him.

Israeli officials are afraid of the legal consequences of taking effective action against those who are launching the kites and balloons. They are afraid that they will be dragged into the International Criminal Court (even though Israel did not sign the treaty creating it and does not consider itself bound by its decisions), if the army kills any of the “civilians” that are burning our country. Those under the age of 18 are counted as “children,” and as you know one of the themes of anti-IDF propaganda is the false claim that we deliberately target children.

Purposely burning agricultural land is a war crime. Attacking from heavily populated civilian areas and employing child soldiers are war crimes. Hamas and PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) don’t care, of course. Their whole strategic plan is to take advantage of the fact that Israel considers herself bound by the laws of war, the Geneva Conventions and other treaties, while they permit themselves to do anything that will kill Jews.

They don’t do it by themselves. They have help.

Israel is always required to fight an n+1 front war, with n representing the enemies that are shooting at us, Hamas, PIJ, Hezbollah, and the rest. The additional one is the international diplomatic and legal system, led by our “friends” in the European Union.

In the past week, two Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria have been partly demolished, because homes have been found to be built on “private Palestinian land.” This means that – regardless of whether the land was considered state land when the homes were built – a Palestinian claim, sometimes not even by an individual owner, that the land was at one time used for agricultural purposes by Palestinians, has been accepted by Israel’s Supreme Court. The remedy is invariably that any structure that encroaches on such land will be demolished in toto.

Recently, the Knesset passed a law (the “Regulation Law”) that allows the state to financially compensate the Palestinian “owners” when the land was not considered private at the time the structures were built, instead of bulldozing the buildings (this can be tricky, since there usually are no records that might prove ownership in the sense familiar to those living in normal countries). This law didn’t apply in these cases, because the Supreme Court had ordered the demolitions some months ago, before the law was passed. The Court has now frozen the law awaiting its decision on various petitions against it.



Naturally, our European friends and home-grown champions of Palestinian rights were scandalized by this law. “It’s legalized land theft,” they say. This is quite an exaggeration, since the law calls for the Palestinians to be paid above-market value for the land, which they are not using and may not have used for decades (if ever). Eminent domain proceedings in the US, in which an owner can be evicted from property where he is living or using for business, are far harsher. But my guess is that despite this, when the Supreme Court rules on the petitions filed against it, they will overthrow the law.

Now you may wonder who files these petitions, the ones against the Regulation Law and the ones claiming that Israeli structures have been built on “private Palestinian land.” The answer is that there is a whole industry in Israel of “human rights” non-governmental organizations that employs a battery of expensive and dedicated lawyers to fight the State of Israel. Thanks to Israel’s extraordinary system in which any citizen may petition the Supreme Court on almost any matter, regardless of whether he or she is affected by it, left-wing groups like Peace Now, Yesh Din, and others can and do involve themselves in these matters.

But who supports the organizations, pays their staffs and their lawyers? Probably no more than a few percent of Israelis support what most see as their extremist ideology. And yet left-wing NGOs are everywhere, filming and trying to provoke IDF soldiers doing their duty, finding Palestinians who will testify that their grandfathers worked the land on such-and-such a hill where today an Israeli settlement stands, and filing petition after petition in the Israeli courts, particularly the Supreme Court.

The money does not come from Israel. It doesn’t even come from the Palestinians, whose leaders are happy to skim millions from the aid they get from the US and Europe, primarily to live well or put into their Swiss bank accounts. It comes, unsurprisingly, mostly from European governments, where millions of Euros are funneled into organizations like Peace Now, Yesh Din, B’tselem, Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, Breaking the Silence, Adalah, and many others. Somewhat less important donors include the American New Israel Fund and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

These foreign-funded NGOs are active in the Israeli and international legal arenas, as well as the international propaganda campaign to demonize and delegitimize the State of Israel. Some explicitly support BDS, despite the official positions of their donors. For example, several of them recently sent a letter to the American Secretary of State calling for an arms embargo against Israel because of its actions to defend its border.

Today the NGO Monitor organization, which keeps track of anti-Israel NGOs and their funding, released a report showing that the European Union has given large grants (hundreds of thousands of Euros) to several NGOs to press war crimes accusations against IDF officers and soldiers and other Israeli officials in foreign courts. This sort of thing may in part explain the timidity of the IDF to take effective action against the arsonists of Gaza.

While our Arab and Iranian enemies have had little success in damaging our Jewish state with wars and terrorism, our European ones have succeeded with their Euros to roll back settlement activities in Judea/Samaria, resulting in the expulsion of Jews from their homes. They have fought tooth and nail against our government’s efforts to deport illegal migrants, whom it rightly considers a demographic and social threat. They have hamstrung the IDF’s response to arson terrorism from Gaza, and turned the main concern of the IDF from defeating our enemies to avoiding legal entanglements.

The message this sends to the terrorists of Hamas, the PLO, and the PIJ is simple: you have a green light – the Jews are too weak to fight back.

There are solutions to these problems. Two years ago, the Knesset passed a relatively weak transparency law requiring some NGOs to report contributions from foreign governments. It needs to be strengthened – in fact, there is no reason for Israel to permit foreign governments to intervene in our domestic affairs at all. Opponents will tell you, precisely inverting the truth, that limiting the influence of foreign-funded NGOs is “anti-democratic,” as if democracy requires subverting the will of Israeli voters! But there is only one reason that such legislation is opposed in the Knesset, and that is because some members are themselves treasonously sucking at the European teat. That has to stop.

The Supreme Court has far too much power and zero accountability. No other democratic country has such a situation. The balance of power between the branches of government must be restored.



The other necessary change is a change of attitude. The more Israel refrains from self-defense because of fear of the legal consequences, the more she will be threatened with such consequences. The cycle must be broken, both because it prevents us from acting and because it broadcasts weakness to our enemies. The arson kites need to be met with deadly force, not endless debate. Jewish residents of the territories should have at least equal rights as Arabs, and not be evicted from their homes as a result of legal catch-22s. Illegal migrants should be deported (see here and here).

The legal and diplomatic decks are stacked against us today, partly because of our own actions. We need to get over it and defend ourselves. Nobody else will.

Hamas Terror Cell Smashed in Northern Samaria

A large scale and active Hamas terror cell, focused on carrying out attacks across a wide area in Israel has been uncovered and dismantled by the Israel Security Agency (ISA), the IDF, an d the Israel Police.

The terror cell which numbered 20 people was active from October 2017 until its members were detained in late April 2018. Most of the cell’s members belonged to Hamas; some had extensive experience in terrorist operations including the production of explosives and IEDs.

Investigations of the suspects carried out by the ISA revealed that the terror cell intended to carry out attacks thoughout Israel including a bomb attack in Tel Aviv, a suicide attack in Jerusalem, a bomb attack in Itamar, and shooting attacks in Samaria.



These attacks were thwarted, some at the last minute, due to the arrest of the group’s members.

In the course of the above investigations various IEDs were seized, including one weighing 10 kilograms and which was to be operated by a cellular phone, as well as approximately 15 kilograms of explosive material, raw materials for the production of explosives, weapons and instructions for the manufacture of bombs and explosive materials.(See attached photos.)

In addition to the main terror cell, other Hamas cells who were planning to carry out attacks were also uncovered.

The Shchem based terror cell was led by two local Hamas members Mutassem Nuhammad Salem, 35 and Fares Kamil Zavidi, 33, who recruited the other members and were responsible for both planning the attacks and manufacturing the IEDs.

A senior ISA officer said: “This case again shows the desire and efforts that Hamas is investing in building terrorist infrastructures in Judea and Samaria in order to carry out severe attacks in Israel. This case also indicates Hamas’ desire to carry out attacks against Israeli targets while undermining the current relative quiet. Severe attacks and loss of life have been prevented. We, along with our partners in the IDF and Israel Police, will continue to take determined action to thwart Hamas’s murderous intentions. Infrastructure members will be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law.

Image Source: ISA

Image Source: ISA

Hamas Breaks Ceasefire, Israel Responds Destroying Military Targets in Gaza

Hamas broke their own ceasefire last night by firing more than five rockets and mortars into Israel.  These landed in populated civilian areas sending residents fleeing into their bunkers.  The IDF attacked back immediately destroying multile military targets in Gaza.



Is War Coming to Israel’s South?

There is no doubt that Iran is pulling the strings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in order to open up a third front against Israel.  The Gaza front has little to do with conquering territory.  Rather it is being activated with the sole purpose of draining Israel’s resources and attention away from the North, mainly from Iranian movements in and around the Golan. The war being waged against Israel, is designed to exact a psychological toll on Israel’s populace while buying time for Iran to find a hole in Israel’s defenses.

The first round of warfare clearly went to Israel, but unless Russia agrees to the total removal of Iran and Hezbollah from Syria and not just near the Golan, the noose will continue to tighten around the Jewish State.




Gaza – A “simple” solution

Denying—or delaying—the inevitable does not make it any less inevitable, only more costly

 

To remain at peace when you should be going to war may be often very dangerous….Let us attack and subdue…that we may ourselves live safely for the future. – Thucydides (c. 460–395 BCE)

No government, if it regards war as inevitable, even if it does not want it, would be so foolish as to wait for the moment which is most convenient for the enemy .– Otto von Bismarck (1815–1890)


If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against – Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

This week, Gaza was once again simmering on the brink of largescale military conflict, the fourth in just under a decade.

Yet, even as the specter of recurring tragedy looms ever closer, the discourse (even—indeed especially—in Israel) on how to avoid “another round of violence” remained mired in a rehashed potpourri of previously disproven formulae—which ranged from the patently puerile to the positively preposterous; and from the blatantly inane to the borderline insane.

They are all doomed to fail—just as they did in the past. Indeed, even if the current efforts to sustain the current fragile calm succeed, it is only a matter of time until the inherent volatility reasserts itself and erupts once again. And again. And again.

 

Misunderstanding Palestinian pathology

Last week, I referred to a 2016 article in “Commentary”, by Prof. Michael Mandelbaum, of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, entitled, The Peace Process is an Obstacle to Peace. In it, the author attributes the failure of the effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to“…an inadequate understanding of the pathology it attempted to cure…[Accordingly], it did not solve the problem it was intended to fix, and it sometimes made it substantially worse.”

This is precisely the syndrome that we are witnessing right now.

None of the prescribed remedies address effectively the underlying causes of the malaise, which are being mistakenly imputed, by misinterpreting its symptoms.

Worse! What we are seeing is more than a mere misdiagnosis. It is nothing less than an utter reversal of causality; a complete inversion of cause and effect.

This is particularly disturbing when it comes from within much of the Israeli leadership. For although, overall, there is little disagreement that Hamas, and its even more radical Islamist offshoots, are responsible for the current outburst of violence, the dominant theme advanced for restoring and maintaining calm is through the improvement of the humanitarian conditions in Gaza.

This is a grave error! For, it is—demonstrably—both untrue factually and detrimental strategically.

Indeed, to base any policy initiative on such a tenet would, to paraphrase Mandelbaum, reflect a hopelessly “inadequate understanding of Palestinian pathology”. Accordingly, it would “not solve the problem it was intended to fix”, but, in all likelihood, will make “it substantially worse.”



Complicit with the enemy

To attribute the hostility toward Israel to the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza plays directly into the hands of Israel’s detractors. Indeed, it is, in effect, to be complicit with the enemy—endorsing its mendacious and malevolent narrative.

After all, it necessarily implies that if only Israel would somehow initiate/facilitate an improvement in Gaza’s living conditions, the violence would subside. This not only reinforces the false claims that Palestinian terrorism is driven by Israeli-induced economic privation, but also that Israel bears the responsibility for such terror, which is, therefore, no more than an understandable reaction to hardship and despair, externally imposed by an alien power.

But this, as mentioned previously, is a malicious inversion of causality.

For, the penury in Gaza is not the cause of Arab enmity towards the Jewish state. Quite the opposite! It is Arab enmity towards the Jewish state that is the cause of penury in Gaza.

The current conditions in Gaza are the result of neither a lack of international humanitarian aid, nor of Israeli largesse. Gaza has enjoyed an abundance of both, only to   squander them on efforts to harm Israel by diverting massive resources to the construction of a vast military infrastructure with which to assault the Jewish state.

Indeed, for anyone with even a smidgeon of familiarity with Israeli society and its basic impulses, must know that, had there been any genuine desire for peaceful coexistence with its Jewish neighbors, Gaza would have flourished.  Israeli enterprise and expertise, which transformed Israel from a struggling agricultural-based country to a super-charged post-industrial powerhouse in a few decades, would have flooded into the enclave, providing opportunity and employment for its impoverished residents.

 

Gaza: “Cutting its nose to spite its face”

So, in effect, the only thing that the Gazans need to do to extricate themselves from their current predicament is…nothing! All they need to do is stop what they are doing now—attacking Israel. Indeed, the only thing that needs to happen for Gaza to thrive is for them to convincingly foreswear hostility and embrace peaceful coexistence with Israel.

But of course, that will not happen! For that is not in the nature of the Gazan populace, who overwhelmingly (70%) endorse a return to armed intifada and who prefer “armed resistance” by a factor of two to one over “nonviolent resistance” or “negotiations”.

Nothing could symbolize the Gazan’s willingness to “cut one’s nose to spite one’s face” better than the destruction of the hi-tech greenhouses left behind by the Jewish farmers in the 2005 Disengagement. Rather than operate them for their own benefit, a frenzied mob trampled them into mangled ruin the moment the IDF left the area.

It should therefore be clear that the  priorities of the Gazan people, as a collective, are not to improve their socio-economic lot, but to inflict harm on the Jewish state, whose sovereign existence they obdurately refuse to accept—except as a temporary tactic to allow them to enhance their offensive capabilities to pursue a later endeavor to destroy it.

In this equation of enmity, resolving the conflict has nothing to do with what the Jewish state does (or does not do). It has everything to do with what the Palestinian-Arabs are—and what they are not!

 

Greatly enhanced military capabilities

Of course, the Gazans have shown considerable initiative, innovation and ingenuity—none of which has been directed towards developing socio-economic realities in the enclave.

If one surveys the enhancement of Gaza’s military capabilities since Israel withdrew in 2005, it is impressive indeed. In fact, had such progress been envisaged before the pullout, it is doubtful whether it would have been undertaken at all!

After all, back then, the most formidable weapon the terror organizations had at their disposal was a primitive rocket with a 5 kg explosive charge and 5 km range. Today, not only do they have an arsenal of missiles with a range of 100 km (possibly more) and a warhead of 100 kg (possibly more), but in December 2016, Hamas Political Bureau Member, Fathi Hammad, proudly informed Al Aksa TV: “If you look into the missile or weapon industries of developed countries, you will find that Gaza has become the leading manufacturer of missiles among Arab countries…

To this must be added the huge investment in the maze of underground terror tunnels (the last one discovered reaching almost a kilometer into pre-1967 Israel), the development of naval forces and of drone capabilities.

Significantly, after each round of fighting, despite the heavy damage inflicted by the IDF, the Gazan-based terror groups have ypically emerged with vastly enhanced military capabilities and political standing.

 

Soon drones with biological/chemical payload??

They have shown that they can transform everyday children’s playthings, such as kites, into instruments of extensive destruction, and forced Israel to develop hugely expensive defenses (such as Iron-Dome interceptors) to deal will risibly cheap weapons of attack (such as mortar shells).

Indeed, it is hardly beyond the limits of plausibility that Israel might soon have to face incoming missiles with multiple warheads, which disperse just before being intercepted, greatly challenging its missile defense capabilities. Or the development of some kind of anti-aircraft capabilities that could restrict—or at least hamper—Israel’s present unlimited freedom of action over the skies of Gaza.

Or worse, will Israel have to contend with the specter of a swarm of drones, armed with biological or chemical payloads, directed at nearby Israeli communities—rendering the billion dollar anti-tunnel barrier entirely moot? For those who might dismiss this as implausible scaremongering – see here, here, and here.

Israel’s decade long policy of ceasing fire whenever the other side ceases fire has allowed Hamas, and its terror affiliates, to launch repeated rounds of aggression, determining not only when they are launched and when they end, but also largely controlling the cost incurred for such aggression –ensuring it remains within the range of the “acceptable”.

This is clearly a recipe of unending and escalating violence—and must be abandoned before it culminates in unintended, but inevitable, tragedy.

Over 180 cases of attempted murder

Earlier this week, over 180 rockets and mortar shells were launched at Israeli civilian targets in a 24 hours period.

Each one of those projectiles was intended to take the lives of innocent Israeli civilians. As such, each launch was a clear case of attempted murder—and Israel should relate to them with commensurate severity. Poor aim on the part of the would-be murderers can—and should—not be a mitigating factor. The fact that, fortunately, no Israeli lives were lost is hardly the point here. Indeed, in the case of a shell landing in a kindergarten, terrible tragedy was averted only by happenstance—and a few minutes.

Persisting with the same policy as in the past will produce precisely the same results it produced in the past: Continued attempts at mass murder!

After all, there is not a shred of evidence that the Palestinian-Arabs will morph into anything that they have not been for over a hundred years, nor that they are likely to do so within any foreseeable time horizon. Indeed, as time progresses, such an outcome seems increasingly remote.

Accordingly, any policy paradigm based on the assumption that, somehow, they can be coaxed or coerced into doing just that, is hopelessly fanciful and fraught with grave perils.

Gaza: The “simple” solution

To formulate an effective policy regarding Gaza, we need to understand the pathology of what we are attempting to address. The source of the conflict is the physical presence of a large, implacably hostile Arab population on Israel’s southern border. Simple logic therefore dictates that to remove the source of conflict, that hostile population must be removed.

Israel will not be able to indefinitely endure recurring bouts of fighting—whenever the enemy on the other side feels sufficiently bold to launch an attack or sufficiently desperate not to be able to refrain from one.

Accordingly, the solution for Gaza is not, and cannot be, its reconstruction, but its deconstruction and the generously funded humanitarian relocation and rehabilitation of the non-belligerent Gazans to third party countries, outside the “circle of violence”.

To achieve this, the IDF cannot content itself with periodic punitive sorties, followed by a limited interbellum, in which the enemy regroups, rearms and redeploys, ready for the next round. It must conquer the entire Gaza Strip, apprehend (otherwise dispose of) the current Gazan leadership, dismantle the current mechanism of governance and begin a vigorous program of incentivized emigration of the non-belligerent population.

This is the “simple” solution for Gaza—and the only durable one. Of course, to say that it is “simple” does not imply that it is “easy”. Indeed, the great difficulty it entails is rooted in its brutal simplicity of “Them or Us”.

Clearly, the fact that it is relatively easy to propose such a harsh policy prescription in the air-conditioned comfort of my study does not make it any less imperative or less inevitable.

After all, denying or delaying the inevitable does not make it any less inevitable, only more costly when it inevitably comes about.