South quietest in years, but Hamas readying for new war, general warns
Israel will retaliate ‘with full force available’ if attacked, says southern command chief Eyal Zamir
Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter
Israeli communities bordering the Gaza Strip are enjoying the calmest time in years, a senior IDF general said Wednesday, while warning that Hamas was using the period of extended quiet to rebuild its forces for a new confrontation.
General Eyal Zamir, head of the Israeli army’s southern command, said that while Israel would not initiate a new war, if attacked, the army would retaliate “with the full force available to us,” Channel 2 News reported.
Israel fought a bruising 50-day war against Hamas-led fighters in the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2014, but since then a shaky ceasefire has held, with the calm only broken by sporadic rocket attacks and Israeli retaliatory strikes.
The war was the third major engagement fought between Israeli and Gaza since 2008, in a bid to stem rocket fire that had become a daily reality for Israelis living in border communities since 2001.
Speaking to a meeting of Kibbutz Movement officials, Zamir said the last two years since the 2014 war have been “the quietest, in relative terms, of the last decades” and were seeing new families move to the southern Israeli area of the Negev, an area made up of several of the farming collectives.
Several Israeli officials have warned in the past year that Hamas is attempting to rebuild its forces, including its rocket arsenal and network of underground tunnels, some of which reach into Israel.
Israel says it recently deployed an underground system meant to find and thwart the tunnels.
Despite the relative calm, the last several months have been marked by a number of flare-ups along the frontier, leading to fears a new conflict can break out.
Earlier this month, shots were fired from northern Gaza at IDF forces across the border, and three Hamas fighters were reported wounded after the IDF responded with a volley of shells targeting a Hamas post, according to Palestinian reports.
Tensions along the border also flared on August 22 after a rocket from the coastal territory landed in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, leading to an IDF retaliation against as many as 50 installations which the army termed “key Hamas strategic assets” using tanks and aircraft.
Hamas quickly claimed the response was an attempt by Israel to change the status quo in Gaza — and Israel agreed.
“You can’t expect the State of Israel to allow [Hamas] to rearm itself, to steal money from the residents of Gaza. They are levying taxes and not constructing buildings, but tunnels,” Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said the following day at an army base in the Galilee.
