(Israel Hayom) Prof. Eyal Zisser - Our American friends sent military experts to Israel following the Oct. 7 atrocities to "advise" it not to go to war, since in their view it would not be able to decisively defeat Hamas. You will get bogged down in a futile battle, they warned, just as you sank into the Lebanese quagmire four decades ago, and as America got entangled in Vietnam. Israel did not heed this advice, and rightly so. True, individual terrorists and even terror cells are still active in the field, just as they are in Judea and Samaria, but Hamas, as an organized army and as a governing body, has been decisively defeated. Gaza is neither Lebanon nor Vietnam because it does not provide depth for terror. The Gaza of post-Oct. 7 is similar to Judea and Samaria which also lacks geographic depth for terror, and therefore poses an ongoing security challenge for us, but not a strategic threat. The Americans have good intentions, but also naivety and a tendency to believe that a bloody religious-ethno conflict of over 100 years can be resolved with goodwill. The writer is a lecturer in the Middle East History Department at Tel Aviv University.
2024-03-26 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive