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Israel must be tough on terrorism but careful at the same time
In vowing to exterminate the Hamas, Israel has gone on an offense, which speaks of an unimaginable humanitarian disaster that is to unfold.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel with Israeli soldiers / X/@netanyahu
It really does not matter how Israel sees the events of October 7—as its 9/11 or a standalone challenge from a terror outfit called the Hamas acting supposedly on behalf of the Palestinians. The events of the last several days speak of calamitous period ahead for the people of West Bank, the Gaza and by extension the Middle East.
In the name of finishing off the Hamas the hastily put together unity government in Israel has embarked on a course that, if not executed properly, will prove counter- productive. The vicious and brutal attack by the notorious Hamas is not surprising, the planning of which must have been in the months, if not years.
Terror outfits like the Hamas are quite capable of killing dozens at a music festival, taking innocents as hostages and executing young children in the name of teaching a lesson or two to the Jewish state. And if the Hamas or any of its backers thought that the response was going to be proportionate as per norms of international law, they must be smoking something different.
Retaliations are often disproportionate and many times more savage as what the Israelis have shown—the Gaza strip is aflame with people literally running any place that would be a safe zone; the place of some two million people has been cut off from water, electricity and food; and worse, notice has been served for one half of the town to move, as if to imply there is a comfort zone at all.
The rest of the world is looking at the horrifying prospect of an escalating and expanding war with Israel having enough wherewithal to “finish” the job it started.
The government in Tel Aviv must be careful in not getting carried away. Right now Israel has a fund of goodwill even from quarters that normally shuns it; and much of this has to do with the scale of brutality that has come along with the attack by the Hamas.
But in vowing to exterminate the Hamas Israel has gone on an offense that has not been witnessed before; and putting one million residents of Gaza on notice to leave speaks of an unimaginable humanitarian disaster that is to unfold. A full fledged land invasion is a more horrifying scenario that will exact a tremendous civilian toll given that the terrorist cowards hide in hospitals, among women and children and places of worship.
Israel will have to come to terms with terror in all its forms. But at the same time will have to make sure that the repraisals do not affect the ordinary Palestinian who has been caught up in the sordid mess of the Hamas, Hizbollah, and Iran on the one hand, and the politics of normalization between Israel and its Arab neighbours on the other.
Paying attention to the real aspirations of the Palestinian people instead of terror outfits masquerading as their spokespersons is a good way to start. It is no doubt difficult but never too late
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