It’s like a movie on repeat.
Another day, another round of incendiary balloons and rockets launched from the Gaza Strip followed by Israeli airstrikes.
Except it’s the reality for thousands of Israelis living around the Gaza Strip.
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On Sunday a rocket was launched from the Hamas-run coastal enclave, hours after an incendiary device was found in a community bordering the Strip.
The Israeli military responded with airstrikes targeting four Hamas military compounds in addition to a terror tunnel.
Following the airstrikes, more rockets were fired at southern Israel.
Two of the missiles were intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system. Several Israelis were injured while running for shelter.
Four missile attacks have been launched from Gaza in less than a week. The IDF responded like it always does, targeting Hamas military infrastructure.
Just like the rocket attacks since May’s Operation Guardian of the Walls, no Palestinian group took responsibility for the rocket fire.
With the two last fugitives from Gilboa Prison belonging to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, it is more than likely that PIJ are the culprits.
But, Hamas is the group that rules the Strip and it’s Hamas who pays.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is carried during a visit to the Ain el Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon in September 2020. (credit: AZIZ TAHER/REUTERS)
However, there’s a problem with Israel’s strategy.
Israel’s military and defense establishment has promised, and continues to repeat, rhetorically, that “what was no longer is.” However, it seems more like “what was continues to be.”
The IDF says that the intensity and targets of the strikes have increased since the May conflict. But for all of its talk, Israelis in the south continue to run to their bomb shelters.
And this week, it’s been on an almost nightly basis.
A senior IDF officer recently said that there are only two options regarding Gaza, and neither are likely to occur:
Overthrowing Hamas and reoccupying the Gaza Strip, or overthrowing Hamas and turning the enclave into Dubai 2.0.
The best option for Gaza, senior brass have decided, is to live with the waves of violent rounds of conflict, like Operation Guardian of the Walls.
The IDF said that while it struck dozens of Hamas targets during the May operation, including weapons manufacturing plants and multi-barrel rocket launchers, it was not able to destroy the group’s rocket arsenal.
The military has admitted that while it viewed the operation as a success that restored its deterrence in the south, due to a lack of precise intelligence, only part of Hamas’ rocket stockpile was hit, giving it ample opportunity to fire thousands of missiles in the future.
Or they can be fired one by one, day by day.
ALTERNATE PRIME Minister Yair Lapid addresses his Knesset faction in July against the backdrop of his party slogan: ‘We came to change.’ (credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)
On Sunday, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said that the two options outlined by the senior officer “are two bad options. That’s not a reality we can accept.”
Speaking at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism Conference at Reichman University, Lapid said Israel should instead advance the “economy for security” formulation without negotiating with Hamas.
His two-step plan, which he said “would create stability on both sides of the border,” is full of concepts that are by no means new and is not an official government policy.
But, the foreign minister said, “we can’t accept this reality. The State of Israel has a duty to tell its citizens we have turned every stone in an attempt to deal with the Gazan issue.”
Though Israel’s military has understood that the issue of Gaza cannot be ignored, it’s as if it has given up winning the fight and resorted to retaliatory strikes instead of being on the offensive.
Israel’s southern communities suffer the most from that decision.
Why should they live with almost daily rocket fire at a time where the country is not at war?
Why should parents have to rush their kids to bomb shelters, or sleep in them so that they don’t need to wake the children?
Yair Lapid has understood what the IDF has seemingly given up on.
There needs to be another way or else residents of southern Israel will continue to be held hostage to a situation that at any moment can deteriorate into another war.
Jesus Christ is King
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