Head of the Political Department of the Defense Ministry, Major General Amos Gilad, told Israel Radio that the demand to launch a preventive war against the Gaza tunnels is impractical, because “you don’t launch preventive wars no one understands.” Gilad added that the US will invest about $130 million to support Israel in finding a response to the tunnel threat. He reassured listeners that if Hamas attempts an attack on Israel through the tunnels it would be met with an operative response that would exact a heavy price from the Palestinians.
He did not speculate regarding the price that would be paid by the Jewish residents into whose back yards the Hamas tunnels are, ostensibly, pointing.
Gilad said he had not seen the State Auditor’s report that found gaps and deficiencies in the IDF’s preparedness for the tunnels’ threat, but noted that the draft was not supposed to be publicized.
State Auditor Yosef Shapira on Thursday submitted to Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, and IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot the draft regarding the security system’s readiness to deal with the tunnels. The Auditor’s announcement said the draft “points to gaps and deficiencies in the preparedness for and treatment of the tunnels threat. This includes the years prior to and during the [2014] Operation Protective Edge, including references to security issues in the [Gaza border] communities.”
As to the Arab terror, Gilad said that he remains convinced that this is not an intifada, meaning a broad national rebellion, but agrees that it is “a security challenge that must be met.” He said the Palestinian Authority has been acting against the terrorist infrastructure because it realizes that not repressing terrorism would result in its own collapse, as was the PA’s experience in Gaza.
Gilad repeated the official mantra pinning the blame for the lone terrorists on the continued Arab incitement. It was not clear whether Gilad included the 3-man squad that sprayed the Shechem Gate with sub-machine gun fire this week among those “lone terrorists.”