The future of the State of Israel currently stands at a crossroads: will it exist as a sovereign state defending itself by force of its sons and daughters, or will it become a weakening Jewish refuge that exists under the auspices of superpowers? This fateful question now depends on cabinet decisions, focusing on the obligation to defeat Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
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The repeated delay in launching the offensive ground operation into the heart of the Gaza Strip is exploited by IDF forces to improve preparedness. We hope that, just like the wait that preceded the Six-Day War, the wait will be expressed at the moment of the test in a ready-made and successful storm breakout. The hesitation at the political level is largely related to the uncertainty and the dispute over the arrangement of life in the Gaza Strip at the end of the war. At this stage, the duty of action and its wisdom require action even in the absence of the ability to clearly mark the horizon of the arrangement on the day after.
The people of Israel are united as they have not been for decades
Although the conduct of war has processes of action that require systematic management in an engineering format, war by its very nature is the very opposite of engineering action. In a car manufacturing plant, the final product must be defined in detail before production begins, as well as in the management of a special operation. In war, on the other hand, as a situation inherently fraught with uncertainty, the only way out of the embarrassment of unanswered questions is to take action.
The people of Israel are united, as they have not been for decades, in the consciousness of the necessity of bringing the Hamas leadership in Gaza and its army to a crushing defeat. Since the strengthening of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, there has been no such national decisiveness in Israel's clear expectation of an all-out war against Hamas. A government that misses such an opportunity will plunge the State of Israel down a slippery slope of terminal existential weakness.
Evacuees from Kibbutz Kfar Azza at a hotel in Shfayim, this week, photo: Efrat Eshel
What is right now is to give the IDF forces the blessing of the way to action, with a deep understanding that from the achievements and results of the operation, the horizon of possibilities regarding an arrangement for the future that has not yet been created will become clear. In the meantime, the Israeli government must act with a clear recognition that for the future all options are open. This includes the possibility of occupation and control of the territory for a long time.
In any way, we must reject out of hand the possibility of giving the Gaza Strip to Abu Mazen and his people on a silver platter obtained with the blood of our sons. All the massacres carried out by Hamas operatives against Israeli civilians near the Gaza Strip are the realization of the messages that appear in Palestinian Authority textbooks.
The idea of stationing international forces in Gaza at the end of the occupation is also fundamentally unfounded. It is recommended to learn the lessons of UNIFIL's failure in Lebanon in its inability to supervise the implementation of UN Resolutions 1701 adopted at the end of the Second Lebanon War. Above all, the security of the State of Israel cannot depend on the goodwill of international forces.
A great danger to the State of Israel certainly lies in the possibility that after the war it will meet the demands for the realization of the two-state solution. In such a move, sooner or later, what happened to the envelope may happen in the Sharon and Tel Aviv. It is necessary to repeat the lesson of fate at the Nahal Oz post on the morning of Saturday, October 7. The basic lesson is familiar but denied – defense needs territorial depth.
Out of this obviousness, the Israeli government, which stands at an unprecedented strategic crossroads, is demanding a heroic historic decision, no less faith and daring than those expressed by Ben-Gurion in 1948. Under no circumstances should the Gaza Strip be given to Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas's massacres are the realization of the messages that appear in Palestinian Authority textbooks.
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