Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Tuesday called on his fellow ministers to approve a large-scale military campaign against the Hamas terror group in Gaza in light of ongoing riots and violence along the Strip’s security fence.
“I’ve held a series of meetings with the head of the Southern Command, the head of the [Gaza] Division, the brigade commanders, the battalion commanders, also with soldiers. My impression is that they all have reached the understanding that the situation as it is today cannot continue,” Liberman said.
According to the defense minister’s assessment, a “serious blow” to Hamas would result in four to five years of calm along the Gaza border — akin to the quiet that persisted from the end of the 2014 Gaza war, known in Israel as Operation Protective Edge, until the start of the current round of clashes in late March, a few limited skirmishes notwithstanding.
Some 155 Palestinians have been killed and thousands more have been injured in the clashes with IDF troops, according to AP figures; Hamas has acknowledged that dozens of the dead were its members. One Israeli soldier was shot dead by a sniper on the border.
The riots began as weekly events, but in recent weeks — due to both an internal Palestinian conflict and failed indirect negotiations with Israel — the clashes have become a daily event.
The defense minister said the “straw that broke the camel’s back” and convinced him that a full-scale military action was necessary in Gaza was the rioting that took place along the border last Friday evening, after Israel allowed additional fuel into the Strip that had been purchased by Qatar.
“We have exhausted all other options in Gaza,” Liberman said during a visit to the Israel Defense Forces’ Gaza Division headquarters near the Strip.
“Now is the time to make decisions,” he added.
Liberman said “persuasions and international cooperations” have failed to bring about a negotiated armistice with the Hamas terror group, leaving only the possibility of military action.
“We need to strike a serious blow at Hamas,” he said. “That’s the only way to bring back quiet.”
The security cabinet, which approves such military campaigns, met Sunday to discuss the possibility of an attack against Hamas, but ultimately decided to wait until the week’s end in order to give negotiators a chance to convince the group to abandon its current violent tactics.
An Egyptian military intelligence delegation reportedly arrived in Gaza on Tuesday to meet with Hamas officials in an attempt to calm the situation.
On Wednesday, the cabinet is due to meet again.
“[A strike on Hamas] must be the decision of the security cabinet,” Liberman told reporters following his meetings with senior IDF officers.
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday designated five groups as top transnational organized crime threats and created a new task force aimed at zeroing in on the three of the world’s most notorious drug cartels, including the terror organization Hezbollah.
Speaking to a group of federal prosecutors, Sessions said the new task force will “develop a plan to take each of these groups off of our streets for good.”
The group focusing on Hezbollah will include prosecutors who specialize in narcotics trafficking, terrorism and organized crime, and will also investigate anyone providing support to the organization, Sessions said.
Hezbollah has morphed into a powerful political player in Lebanon, running its own media and communication channels and providing government-like services to followers in its strongholds.
It is designated a terror group by the US, Israel and a number of Sunni Arab states. The EU has declared the group’s military wing a terror organization, but left its political arm off the blacklist, despite Israeli lobbying.
The US and six Gulf Arab states recently hit the terrorist organization’s leadership with sanctions.
Hezbollah has a sprawling network involved in money-laundering, drug trafficking, and organized crime as well as terrorism, whose reach extends across Africa and into Central and South America. The terrorist organization also has well-documented links with drug cartels.
Sessions, who has been on the receiving end of relentless verbal jabs from US President Donald Trump and may be in the final stretches of his tenure, was speaking directly to one of the president’s prime targets amid the administration’s broader crackdown on immigration: MS-13.
Trump has said MS-13 gang members from the stronghold of El Salvador are coming to the US both illegally and as unaccompanied minors to wreak havoc. He has held up the gang as a reason for stricter immigration policies meted out by Sessions and others.
“With more than 10,000 members in the United States, this gang is the most violent gang in America today,” Sessions said.
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