Israeli army not ready for a regional war due to defeat in Gaza: Ex-Israeli officer

A former Israeli officer says the regime’s army is not ready for a regional war due to its defeat in the latest confrontation with Palestinian resistance movements in the Gaza Strip.

“This month, Israelis witnessed a horrific scenario, where the belief of the victory of the Air Force in any war was completely destroyed,” Yitzhak Brik told Haaretz on Saturday, according to the North press agency.

Brik stressed that after the war on Gaza, the security and political leadership of Israel must not depict a “victory image” to the people in the occupied territories.

“Israeli leaders must return to their senses and immediately meet in a dialogue session to make decisions to prepare the army to confront a multi-front war and shape a modern security belief,” he said.

The Gaza war began on May 10 and lasted until May 21, when the Israeli regime announced a unilateral ceasefire which was accepted, through Egyptian mediation, by the resistance groups.

The war was sparked by weeks of violence in Jerusalem al-Quds against Palestinian worshippers at al-Aqsa Mosque and the regime’s attempts to force more Palestinians out of their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah Neighborhood to build more illegal settlements.

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Brik said despite the Israeli regime’s heavy bombardment of Gaza throughout the 11-day encounter, which killed at least 254 Palestinians and injured 1,948 others, the regime failed to stop the firing of rockets and artillery by the resistance groups in Gaza until the ceasefire went into force.

“Both Hamas and the [Islamic] Jihad continued firing rockets and artillery shells as nothing happened to them,” he stated.

The former Israeli officer pointed out that wars are costly for Israel while what he called “Israeli enemies” are able to continue fighting for weeks and months due to their large weapon depots which contain 250,000 rockets and shells.

“Most of the enemy’s rockets are fixed on mobile launching pads that change their place after the launching, where it is difficult to define their positions to destroy them,” he lamented.

‘Hamas still possesses 100s of long-range missiles’

An Israeli intelligence official also confirmed that Hamas’ rockets are launched from locations throughout the Gaza Strip, with each rocket being enough to trigger the warning sirens in an entire Israeli-occupied town.

“The launching [of rockets] was carried out in a number of ways, but it is based on a policy of intensity of fire determined directly by Mohammed Deif (supreme commander of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, which is the military wing of Hamas),” the unnamed official told Israel’s Channel 12, according to the Arabic-language Safa news agency.

The Israeli intelligence official stated that Hamas still possesses “hundreds of long-range missiles” after the war.

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Earlier this month, the spokesman for Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said the Palestinian resistance is ready for six consecutive months of war.

Abu Ubaida made the remarks on the sixth day after the beginning of the Gaza war.

Meanwhile, Israeli foreign minister Gabi Ashkenazi is slated to fly to Cairo on Sunday to meet with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry for talks on the ceasefire agreement.

Khaled Mashal, a founding member of Hamas and its former leader, said on Friday that the Israeli regime is seeking to achieve politically what it did not achieve in the field.

There are those who try to “deprive the resistance of its victory in Gaza, and to exploit the war to settle the issue politically and through the dead two-state solution,” Mashal added.

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