By playing down the Hamas assaults from the Gaza Strip, Israel’s leaders hope to gloss over the IDF’s mounting involvement in two if not three battlefronts. The IDF has therefore long been restrained from hitting back hard for Hamas’ flaming kites and balloons. On Tuesday night, June 19, the Israeli Air Force strafed 25 Hamas structures, sparking a 45-rocket barrage against the Israeli communities around the Gaza Strip.
The urgent need to halt his militia’s passage into Syria on June 18 was not the only challenge facing the IDF.
For nearly a week, the Syrian army and Hizballah have been massing a large force in southwestern Syria around Quneitra – opposite Israel’s Golan border – and Daraa – facing the Jordanian border. This buildup followed an announcement from Damascus of a forthcoming offensive to capture the two border regions from rebel hands. Until now, the Assad regime has not given the order to go forward, while waiting for Russian approval. However, when these troops do advance, neither Israel nor Jordan can afford to sit on their hands and allow two hostile armies to reach their borders.
This predicament was at the heart of the conversation Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu held with Jordan’s King Abdullah in Amman on Monday.
It is becoming increasingly evident that the Gaza and Syrian battlefronts are interactive.
The argument that Hamas hopes by escalating the violence from Gaza to cash in economically to sustain its rule is old hat. It has been overtaken by events. The rockets, mortar shells, kites and balloons of recent days point at one objective: to pile on Israel an extra active war front and so force the IDF to divide its strength between the two arenas.
Therefore, the challenge of a multiple-front war has become a reality for Israel’s armed forces. How this could have been prevented is no longer relevant. The IDF must now concentrate on grappling with the various fronts and organize its priorities in the best way possible.
For now, the the aggression from Gaza continues to be relegated to a secondary challenge compared with Syria. And so, on Tuesday night, Israeli air strikes continued to bomb empty Hamas buildings after Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists had a chance to escape harm; while Hamas, for its part, is still confining its rocket and mortar volleys to nearby Shear Hanegev, Eshkol district and Hof Ashkelon councils, causing damage but no casualties. Those populations were advised the next day to send their children to school and keep to their usual routines.
At the same time, Israel’s government and military leaders are under no illusions. An escalated level of military clashes in Syria will bring forth a heightened threat from the Gaza Strip. The rockets will be more precise and of longer range for reaching populations outside the immediate neighborhood, including the southern cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod and Beersheba or further north. Maybe it would be preferable for the IDF to prioritize the task of smashing Palestinian war capabilities in the Gaza Strip now before the Syrian front spirals into a major showdown.
Israeli security officials this week revealed the recent thwarting of a massive Hamas terror assault on central Israel.
In October of last year, the Israel Security Agency (ISA, known in Israel as the "Shin Bet") began investigating a large Hamas cell established in the Samarian town of Nablus.
In the ensuing months, the ISA discovered that the cell was planning an unprecedented terrorist offensive.
"In recent months, the Shin Bet, Israel Defense Forces and Israel Police uncovered a Hamas terror cell, extraordinary in its size and level of activity, which operated in the Nablus area," read an ISA statement released this past Sunday.
The cell was made up of over 20 operatives, most of whom have now been arrested. They were planning to carrying out a suicide bombing in Jerusalem, bomb attacks in Tel Aviv and the Jewish settlement of Itamar, and shooting attacks across the northern West Bank.
All of the aforementioned attacks were thwarted, and by the end of April, nearly all the cell members had been taken into custody.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said these revelations again proved why Israel can't simply surrender its biblical heartland for a questionable peace agreement.
"Hamas is trying to harm us both from Gaza and from Judea and Samaria. That is the reason that we will continue to maintain security control over the entire area west of the Jordan," said the Israeli leader in a prepared statement.
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