THANK YOU DEFENCE MIN LIEBERMAN
Senior defense ministry official says Mahmoud Abbas has no legitimacy; warns Israel will overthrow Hamas from Gaza in next war
A senior defense ministry source told defense reporters on Wednesday that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has no political legitimacy, and vowed that in the next war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza the Islamist terror group would be overthrown.
The official began with surprisingly harsh words for Israeli government policy. “We are weak in terms of policy, and strong in the military sphere,” he told reporters from his office, under condition of anonymity.
“This reality needs to change.”
“Abu Mazen isn’t interested in progressing anywhere, or according to any (peace) process,” he continued, referring to PA president Abbas. “That man doesn’t have the public support or the strength to reach any arrangement or agreement,”
The official noted a recent poll carried out by the Shekaki Institute – the most reliable PA-based polling institute of its kind – which found that 65% of Palestinians want Abbas to resign.
Abbas hasn’t visited major PA-controlled cities such as Shechem (Nablus) and Jenin at all over the last eight years, exhibiting his deep unpopularity beyond Ramallah. During that same period, the PA chief has visited European capitals such as London and Paris dozens of times.
He added that while the defense establishment sees Abbas – who presides over widespread incitement and corruption – as the main problem, Hamas is a close second.
“Hamas is a threat which ebbs and flows,” the official said. “It’s enough to see the schoolbooks in Gaza, the school curricula, and the incitement, to understand that we are dealing here with an organization which pours every investment into building military infrastructure against Israel.”
The official also shot down talk of building a seaport in Gaza, floated both by some foreign leaders and members of the current Israeli government, who say improving economic life for regular Gazans is separate to Israel’s struggle with Hamas.
“We won’t allow the construction of a port or anything of the sort,” he said. “The next battle between Israel and Hamas will be the last one. There won’t be any Hamas government after that.”
Turning to the north, the senior official said that while security assessments show Hezbollah is too tied up in Syria and elsewhere in the region to open up another front with Israel, the IDF is highly prepared for every eventuality.
He also addressed social challenges facing the army, calling for greater investment in aiding “lone soldiers”, as well as non-Jewish minorities serving in the IDF.
Israel “must give its full attention to this sector (lone soldiers), as well as to those who enlist even though according to Jewish law they are not Jews,” he insisted, calling for greater efforts to ease the conversion process for those who want “to see themselves as part of (Israeli) society.”
Turning to the ongoing controversy over American military aid to Israel, the senior official called on both Israel and the US to reach an agreement “as fast as possible.”
“We need to close the deal, and there is no room for time extensions.”
On the subject of US defense aid, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman is due to fly to America on Saturday night in order to help push an aid package deal, as well as to take part in the inaugural ceremony for the new F-35 jet.
Yesterday, the defense minister took action against a close aid of Mahmoud Abbas, stripping him off all diplomatic privileges in response to that PA official’s efforts to incite terrorism against Israelis.
“A man like this, who engages for months in incitement against Israel and in subversive activities – including the establishment of a new Arab party – will not receive any further entry permits into Israeli territory,” Liberman said in a statement.
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Israeli MI Chief: Another War Would Turn Lebanon Into ‘A Country of Refugees’
‘Never before has an army known as much about its enemy as we know about Hezbollah,’ Herzl Halevi says.
Military Intelligence chief Herzl Halevi said Wednesday that another war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah would be much harsher for the home fronts on both sides.
“If there is another war, Israel will recover and rebuild,” Halevi said at the annual Herzliya Conference at the IDC Herzliya.
“We are a strong society, an advanced society. Lebanon will become a country of refugees that will have difficultly recovering, and Hezbollah will lose its political support base.”
Halevi said further that the next conflict may already be in the making because Syria has resumed manufacturing weapons expressly for Hezbollah, contravening the terms of the United Nations-backed ceasefire that ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
“Hezbollah has put its hands here and there on ammunition of the sort it hadn’t had access to previously,” Halevi told the conference.
He said that Syrian military industries had resumed weapons production, for Hezbollah, adding that these arms were “not for the fighting in Syria, it is weaponry meant for combat against Israel.”
“The world shouldn’t accept this, it is a violation of Security Council Resolution 1701, passed after the Second Lebanon War, and Israel shouldn’t accept it, either. To a certain extent this could move up the outbreak of another round of conflict.”
Halevi said Iran was also providing Hezbollah with weaponry, which he referred to as strategic arms. He said these transfers were being carried out under the cover of providing aid for the war in Syria, but that some of these weapons are actually being transferred to Lebanon. “This is also something that neither the world nor us should ignore,” he said.
Halevi said the next war would be different from the conflict a decade ago with Hezbollah and the 2014 Gaza war against Hamas and its allies.
“The next war in the north will be essentially different, not just from the Second Lebanon War and Operation Protective Edge, but from the Yom Kippur War and what came before that. In the Yom Kippur War we had a single casualty on the home front from a rocket from Syria,” Halevi said.
“In the next war, it will be a whole different situation. We are stronger than ever in relation to our enemies. We will cope with any challenge. But it’s important to know that the way to achieve this will not be easy or simple. As happens in wars, there will be a price.”
Regarding Israeli intelligence on Hezbollah, Halevi said: “I say with all due caution that I think that never before has an army known as much about its enemy as we know about Hezbollah. But the next war will not be simple or easy.”
Halevi also mentioned the January 2015 incident in which two Israeli soldiers were killed by Hezbollah fire.
“It’s not certain that Hezbollah understood the full potential for casualties in this incident,” he said. “If it had, the response would have been different … and today on the radio we’d be talking about the third war with Hezbollah.”
Halevi said Israel was still clearly the strongest player in the region.
“Maybe because of the Holocaust we still carry this feeling of persecution … but in the region we are perceived as very, very strong, as aggressive and unpredictable and very powerful,” he said. “It’s very important to preserve this asset.”
Its long overdue.
The thinking was it would take six more months to get rid of all the terrorists in house to house fighting. After a lot dead Israeli soldiers what would happen then with Gaza as we would be responsible for it.
I think at some point you must destroy the terrorist base called Gaza. Okay what do you do then with the hostile population? Deport them I am in favor but to where and how? Rent Cruise ships and take them to Libya? Let the few who want to stay and want to make peace pledging loyalty to Israel stay?
Why didn’t Ya ‘alon finish Hamas in 2014????
If there is a next time, to the Litany river.
Lebanon on the pathway to a FAIL state. One way or another, the Iranian fanatics should need to understand. But due to their fanaticism they will not.
That’ll be good. Hamas is a tyranny