Published by: The Washington Times
Thursday, July 17, 2014
OPINION:
There is nowhere left for us to go. Israelis from Eilat to Haifa have heard the red alerts blast as Hamas has indiscriminately launched more than one thousand rockets at our cities over the last few weeks. Israelis throughout the entire country have had to stop, run and hide, as the threat of terrorism has unacceptably become a part of our daily lives.
But the most dangerous weapon in Gaza is not what most would expect—it’s not the M-302 rockets that have put millions of Israelis under the direct threat of terror. Instead, it is the vicious ideology of Hamas that is focused on Israel’s destruction and a culture that has been entrenched in Palestinian society for generations that is the biggest threat to all.
Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly Palestinians who are open to peaceful solutions. But the truth is that these voices are drowned out by extremists, and the stranglehold that Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terror organizations have over the Palestinian people prevents peace from being attained.
Just look at what happened on this week.
With international support, Israel accepted Egypt’s proposed ceasefire, which would have restored quiet by halting all rocket attacks from Gaza and Israel’s responses. This ceasefire would have allowed for at least a temporary calm, and could have opened the door once again for a peaceful diplomatic solution.
But Hamas, which controls Gaza, rejected the ceasefire, as a senior Hamas spokesperson called it, “a joke” in an interview with CNN. Hamas continued its assault on Israel, firing approximately 50 rockets on our cities in a six-hour span as Israel stayed true to the ceasefire and withheld responding. Even today, when the international community called for a five-hour humanitarian ceasefire so that necessary resources could be replenished for the people of Gaza, Hamas fired three mortars into Israel and sent 13 terrorist through underground tunnels to attack Israeli civilians. Luckily, Israel was able to thwart this attack. But this is just further evidence that Hamas continues to perpetrate the suffering of their own people.