We’ll Deter Hamas Rocket Attacks By Doing The Same Things That Didn’t Deter Recent Hamas Rocket Attacks

By the IDF

Kibbutz Nir-Am, June 4 – Here in the communities along the border with the Gaza Strip, we soldiers receive constant reminders why we do what we do: the families who live here who need protecting; the local economy that suffers when rockets and mortars are fired from Gaza; and the beauty of nature at risk from the incendiary kites sent from the other side. That is why we intend to demonstrate to Hamas and other factions in the Gaza Strip that we will exact a dear price for their violence, so dear that we’ve been running the same operations for years, and that did not prevent them from launching hundreds of rockets and shells just over the last week.

Deterrence is the name of the game in this rough neighborhood. Only if we make the consequences of an attack so punishing that it does not pay can we guarantee security and safety for the residents of this area and beyond. Thus the airstrikes. We continue to make our point via operations that target unmanned positions, not to cause even a single casualty among Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Deterrence.

This army, navy, and air force will not rest until calm is restored. We will bring about restoration of that calm by leaving it up to the militants in the Gaza Strip whether or not to keep firing, rather than taking the initiative and rooting out the launching crews, destroying stockpiles, and inflicting permanent damage on the organizations’ personnel and infrastructure. The security of our southern communities is at stake here.

Let us be clear: the Israel Defense Forces will stop at nothing, except trying anything new or more convincing, to protect the citizens of this country.

Quiet will be met with quiet; violence will be met with violence, and just the right amount of violence for us to point to and declaim, “Look, we’ve hit them back and now they’ll stop,” but of course they won’t stop unless they feel like it, which, we mean, come on, is the same thing as our forcing them to stop anyway, from a technical how-many-rockets-are-being-fired-at-the-moment standpoint.

The IDF has the most combat experience of any army out there today, and we vow to continue bringing that experience to bear vis-à-vis Gaza: everything our experience tells us is insufficient to get terrorists to stop attacking our citizens, we will continue to do, and nothing more.

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