Sources inside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office say that Israel’s government intends to complete its occupation of Gaza:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reached a decision for the full occupation of the Gaza Strip, including operations in areas where hostages are held, a source in the Prime Minister’s Office told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
The Prime Minister’s Office conveyed the message to IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir: If this does not suit you, then you should resign.
Negotiations toward a cease-fire agreement have been going on for months in Qatar. Hamas obviously is negotiating in bad faith, and, believing it is winning the public relations war, has no intention of yielding what it considers a strong position. Some in Israel fear that attacking the areas where hostages are being held, Hamas’s last redoubts, creates a risk that Hamas will kill them. That is certainly true, but the 20 or so hostages who remain alive are near death from maltreatment and starvation.
Hamas could have had an end to the fighting long ago, if that was what it wanted. All it had to do was surrender. World War II ended when the Germans and Japanese, losing the war badly, agreed to surrender. But Hamas is worse than the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese. It is a sadistic, sociopathic organization that has no regard for the people it governs or even for its own members.
Since Hamas refuses to surrender and continues to rule portions of Gaza, I don’t see any alternative for Israel but to kill all or substantially all of its members. Unfortunately, it appears that widening the war to the sectors still controlled by Hamas will be necessary to accomplish that goal.
