In an interview on Israel’s Channel One television news (embedded below) the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan said that Hamas was defeated during Operation Protective Edge.
The key achievement was to defeat Hamas, and that’s effectively what has happened, although Hamas, as you would expect, have had their victory celebrations and parades. Of course the truth is far different from that. …. Hamas has been defeated. They haven’t been destroyed, they haven’t been annihilated, but they’ve been defeated, in as much as they have had to accept the terms of a ceasefire, which had been offered to them right at the beginning of the conflict. So they have been responsible for perpetuating the conflict that has killed a large number of their civilian population when they could have accepted these terms before. But they’ve now been forced by Israeli military action … to stop their offensive against Israel. And of course the other achievement, as well as stopping the rockets, is the destruction of all those attack tunnels, which were designed to come in and massacre, murder, kidnap, drug Israeli citizens and to take some of them back into Gaza. So two major, major achievements.
Kemp dismissed the Hamas demand for a seaport and airport, describing their purpose as a means “to re-arm Hamas while Hamas is running the place.”
Kemp said the calls for international observers to supervise reconstruction materials entering Gaza could be taken advantage of by Hamas, which is seeking to consolidate its rule of Gaza and rebuild dozens of military attack tunnels and rocket arsenal that the IDF destroyed and depleted during Operation Protective Edge. Vigilance on part of the West is necessary to ensure that Israel’s victory can be translated into lasting quiet.
I would be very cautious about that because we’ve seen what foreign observers have achieved in other places and we’ve seen how Hezbollah has re-armed itself in Lebanon under the watchful eye of United Nations observers. We see how the United Nations left very rapidly when Hamas took power in Gaza. … if there was a seaport and airport established under international control we could very easily expect to see that international control neutralized by Hamas if Hamas are allowed to remain in power. The key thing, I think, is for the western world to control the construction material to make sure it doesn’t get in and be used for terrorist purposes and to do everything in their power to undermine Hamas and to get Hamas replaced by a government that is going to govern in the interests of the people of Gaza rather than in the interest of the destruction of Israel.
Over the course of the interview Kemp was also asked what he thought of the threat that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) posed:
I think the greater threat to the world today is from ISIS. It doesn’t just present a threat to the countries (in which it operates), it present a threats to the western world by providing in due course a safe haven from which 9/11 type attacks against the West could be planned as they were in Afghanistan. And of course there is also the problem of jihadists returning from Syria and from Iraq.
[Photo: Europecentral / Wiki Commons]
