Israeli sources opened up previously secret information Wednesday and confirmed that Hamas mastermind terrorist Mohammed had planned a massive attack on a kibbutz last summer.
Sources told Army Radio that Khaled Mashaal, who rules Hamas from Qatar, prohibited Deif from carrying out his murder-kidnap plan because he feared a wide-scale Israeli invasion of Gaza.
During the Protective Edge campaign against Hamas missile attacks, the IDF discovered several tunnels, including one that reached only a few hundred feet from the dining hall of Kibbutz Kerem Shalom.
It was not known until today that plans already had been completed, possibly before the IDF discovered the tunnel, to use it to murder a large number of members of the kibbutz and kidnap others through the extensive tunnel system.
Marshall reasoned, probably correctly, that Israeli would have carried out a wide-scale and extended invasion of Gaza, an action that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu refrained from ordering during the war,
Two issues still are being argued today in Israel and Hamas. Israeli military and political circles debate whether Israel should have – and should do if there is another war – invaded Gaza and try to destroy Hamas and any other rival terror organization that threatens to rule it
Within Hamas, debate rages between the political and military echelons over the terrorist organization’s next move. An attack through the tunnel to Kerem Shalom could very well have been successful given the lack of good intelligence on the extent of the tunnel system. On the other hand, no one knows what would have been the results of a fierce Israeli retaliation except for the assumption that both sides would have suffered extensive losses of life,
The IDF tried to assassinate Deif, not for the first time, but reports that he had been killed have turned out to be wishful thinking, according to unnamed sources in Israel.