Unfortunately, the price of Hamas's barbaric terrorist attack on Israel on October 7 is not limited to the long bloody toll of some 1,400 murdered, 239 abductees and dozens of destroyed communities.
The attack succeeded in achieving the ultimate goal of any act of terror, a word whose precise meaning is "terror." Indeed, the sadistic Hamas terrorists have succeeded in their horrific deeds to terrorize not only their immediate victims in the south of the country, but many Israelis all over the country, who now walk around terrified and feel that nowhere is safe anymore, not even their own homes.
IDF activity inside the Gaza Strip, yesterday // Photo: IDF Spokesperson
No human being can live long with such a feeling. Therefore, the supreme task of the State of Israel must now be to remove any immediate potential threat to the lives of civilians and restore their sense of security. The price of avoiding such a move will be the disintegration of Israeli society, the flight of the forces capable of doing so, and prolonged national seclusion.
We can no longer rely on analyzing and evaluating the intentions of our enemies. We must relate only to their capabilities. The price of the error in the assessment became clear in all its horror on October 7, and Israeli society will not be able to withstand another such blow. Anyone capable of threatening Israel, especially terrorist organizations near our border, must be disarmed. The time for guessing and assessing deterrence or the totality of our enemies' considerations has passed. Now we must practically deny their ability to harm us.
This means that Israel now faces several tasks, the destruction of Hamas' military and governmental capabilities being only the first. After this is realized, Israel must insist on the complete demilitarization of the entire territory of the Mandatory Land of Israel, that is, the territories of the State of Israel, Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip. Regardless of the type of solution Israel tries to promote in the Gaza Strip "the day after," a precondition must be a complete prohibition on the possession of weapons by entities that do not belong to the State of Israel. At most, possession of small arms such as pistols and clubs will be permitted for policing purposes only.
Armed men in Jenin, photo: AP.
The same is true of Judea and Samaria. First and foremost, Israel must destroy any Hamas presence on the ground by entering cities, arrests and assassinations. It must then disarm the Palestinian Authority with heavy weapons. Here, too, at most, possession of small arms will be permitted for the purpose of maintaining order in Area A. Even before committing or deciding on any political solutions in both the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria, and regardless of the future of the Palestinian Authority or its relations with Israel, the Israeli condition must be that there will be no weapons in Palestinian hands that can do to us what they did to us on October 7. To complete the picture in the Land of Israel, Israel will have to collect all the illegal weapons in Arab society. Just imagine what one cell of criminals could do in a city like Haifa, for example.
The other critical threat to Israel is from Hezbollah in Lebanon, which by all assessments is a stronger, more skilled and armed organization than Hamas. Israel cannot return to normal life as long as there are tens of thousands of prey-seeking terrorists on its northern border, just waiting for the day when they can carry out their plot. It will be a difficult task, and it will probably involve the creation of regional and perhaps even global alliances, and of course the use of force, but the basic sense of security that was lost to us on October 7 will not return if the northern threat is not fully removed. Hezbollah will have to pass away so that the State of Israel can continue to prosper. For less than that, we as citizens cannot compromise. The totality of the steps may remove from us the sense of dread that threatens to overwhelm.
The writer is a research fellow at the Misgav Institute for Zionist Strategy
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