Former defense chief Liberman says Israel handed Hamas a decisive victory

Former defense minister Avigdor Liberman slams the government’s policies toward Gaza and its rulers, Hamas, saying Israel handed the terrorist group a decisive victory by rewarding it for leading clashes along the border over the past eight months.

“We came out of it like limp rags, like nerds,” Liberman says, speaking at an event in the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya’s Institute for Counterterrorism.

Liberman resigned from the position of defense minister last month, after an intense two-day battle between Israel and Hamas, citing the government’s Gaza policies among other issues.

“Something we need to learn if we want to survive in this jungle known as the Middle East, you can’t give a prize for violence,” he says.

The former defense minister says the issue arose with the “Great March of Return,” the name Palestinians gave to an ongoing series of weekly riots along the border fence, which Israel says are orchestrated by Hamas.

“Since March 30, Hamas has been using violence on the border, and we decided to pay them money to get back the calm,” Liberman says. “If before March 30, Hamas had difficulties in terms of public opinion, since then, we have turned Hamas into a model for imitation,” he says.

“The public support for Hamas has broken all records,” the former defense minister says.

— Judah Ari Gross