Israel is not currently prepared to win a conflict with the Hamas terror organization if it involves invading and occupying Gaza in the long term, according to one Congressman.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) face a “particularly perilous moment” as they prepare to possibly occupy Gaza and eliminate Hamas, said Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking member for the House Armed Services Committee.
“I do not believe that the IDF, right now, is in a position to successfully carry out that mission,” the lawmaker said during an Oct. 20 talk at the Center for a New American Security think tank.
Mr. Smith said that it was vital that Israel succeeds in eliminating Hamas and deterring further terrorist attacks but that the nation currently lacked adequate intel, training, and international political support to succeed at its mission and engage in a prolonged campaign of complex urban warfare.
Israel, he said, will need to develop more clear military objectives if it is to make meaningful strides toward ultimate victory over Hamas.
“I am deeply worried about the consequences of a full-scale invasion into Gaza,” Mr. Smith said.
Israel Must Contend with Hamas’ Ideology Abroad
Complicating the issue of eliminating Hamas, Mr. Smith said, is the continuous propagation of its genocidal ideology, which seeks the destruction of Israel and of the Jewish people.“The goal of dismantling and eliminating Hamas is obviously the objective, but, as we have learned over the course of 20 years now since 9/11… it’s not just as simple as ‘let’s go kill them all.’ It’s not. It is an ideology. It is a broader problem,” Mr. Smith said.
“They’re advocating for a very specific, incredibly vicious, and nihilistic way of looking at the world.”
The lawmaker added that Israel will have to make a continuous effort to regain and then maintain international trust as anti-Israel sentiment could increasingly catalyze new actors against the nation.
“Hamas is playing a much larger game,” Mr. Smith said. “They are trying to win the broader audience that is also going to have an influence on how this conflict turns out.”
To that end, he said that Israel’s slow response to addressing a misinformation campaign that claimed it was responsible for bombing Al-Ahli hospital and its own widely condemned efforts to settle the Palestinian territory of the West Bank had “made Israel less safe” and less likely to be able to achieve military objectives.
To ensure victory rather than a never-ending conflict with new terrorists, Mr. Smith said, Israel would need to lay out its own vision for a politically and economically viable Palestinian government.
“Even if the two-state solution is way off in the future, it should be a fundamental goal of U.S. policy, and of Israel’s policy, to build a viable Palestinian government in the Palestinian territories,” Mr. Smith said.
“It’s not easy, but the alternative gets you the chaos that we’ve seen.”
Mr. Smith also linked Hamas’ latest terror attacks to a wider push by “Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, and various terrorist groups” to undermine and ultimately destroy the rules-based international order.
Those regimes, he said, seek a world without human rights or any positive vision for international law.
“... the overarching objective is to weaken the United States so that we are not there to check them on anything,” Mr. Smith said. “They want a world where they are more free to operate. They want to undermine the existing structure.”
“Undermine, that’s the wrong way to put it. They want to destroy it. They want it gone.”
