Hamas political bureau leader Ismail Haniyeh (Hamas website)

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Wednesday made his first public appearance since Israel destroyed his office in a retaliatory airstrike this week, claiming victory over “Zionist arrogance.”

Haniyeh visited the rubble of his Gaza City office, coming out of hiding after a two-day flare-up of violence, which ended with an unofficial Egyptian-brokered ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas terror group, which rules the Gaza Strip.

The fighting broke out after a rocket fired from Gaza struck a home in central Israel and wounded seven people. Israel responded with dozens of airstrikes in the Strip, while Palestinian terrorists fired dozens of rockets at communities across the border.

“The resistance has had the last word, and Israel got the message,” Haniyeh said. “I am grateful to all parties who helped stop the Zionist arrogance in the Gaza Strip.

View of the Gaza City office of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh on March 26, 2019, after it was destroyed a day earlier by an Israeli airstrike. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

In a statement, an Israeli diplomatic official quipped that Haniyeh “had better find a new office before he brags.”

The Hamas leader also urged Gazans to participate in mass protests along the Israel-Gaza frontier on Saturday to mark the first anniversary of a movement officially aimed at ending the Israeli-Egyptian blockade and resettling Palestinian refugees and their descendants in Israel proper.

Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi ordered troops along the Gaza border to remain on alert for “various scenarios in the region,” the army said.

Earlier in the day, Kohavi visited the Gaza Division and met with its commander, Brig. Gen. Eliezer Toledano, along with Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Herzi Halevi.

The IDF has sent reinforcements to the border in advance of expected clashes this weekend and has allowed the media to publicize the troop buildup.

IDF tanks stationed near the Israeli Gaza border on March 27, 2019. (Dudi Modan/Flash90)

There are fears that violence will ramp up this weekend, with Hamas hoping to draw hundreds of thousands of rioters to the fence to mark a year of so-called March of Return protests, which began March 30, 2018.

Israel says the demonstrations are orchestrated by Hamas in order to provide cover for the organization’s nefarious activities along the security fence, including infiltration attempts, the planting of explosives and attacks on Israeli soldiers.

Their organizers have said the protests aim to achieve the “return” of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to lands that are now part of Israel, and pressure the Jewish state to lift its restrictions on the movement of people and goods into and out of the coastal enclave.

The launch of incendiary and explosive devices into Israel tied to kites and helium-filled balloons became a common tactic in violent protests along the Gaza border over the past year, burning thousands of acres of farmland and nature reserves, and killing livestock and other animals.

Avigdor Liberman speaks at a Maariv conference, March 27th, 2019. (photo credit: ALONI MOR)

Former Defense Minister MK Avigdor Liberman said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally torpedoed plans to strike Gaza during a significant escalation in violence between Israel and Hamas in November.

“Netanyahu personally torpedoed the plans,” the Chairman of Yisrael Beytenu told Ben Caspit at the Maariv Security Conference on Wednesday. “We have enough tools to deal with Gaza and I had a full plan.”

Liberman resigned from his post as defense minister in November following a ceasefire deal signed between Israel and Hamas after over 500 rockets were fired towards southern Israeli communities.

The ceasefire with Hamas, he said at the time “cannot be interpreted in any way other than a capitulation to terrorism. This will severely harm our security in the long run. The response that we gave to the 500 rockets shot from Gaza was not enough, to say the least. The South should come first. Our weakness is being broadcast to other fronts.”

On Sunday the latest escalation with Hamas in the Gaza Strip saw over 100 mortars and rockets fired towards southern Israeli communities, and that, Liberman said, shows that Israel does not have security.

“Security is when people don’t have to run to bomb shelters,” he told Ben Caspit, adding that Israel is paying protection money to terror groups instead of destroying it.

“There’s no terror without money and now Israel is allowing money into Gaza for Hamas. We are paying protection to a terror organization and doing everything not to get the terror organization mad. Netanyahu said he said he struck Hamas hard, but not even one terrorist was even hurt,” he said.

Former deputy IDF Chief of Staff Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan, who also spoke at the conference, told the crowd that Israel’s military has been doing the same thing over and over and over again, allowing the enemy to learn.

“For the past 30 years the IDF has been acting pretty much the same and the enemy has learnt. When you are able to know how the war is going to play out, you know how deal it and how to take the blows,” he said.

In the last round of violence between Israel and Hamas, a civilian home in central Israel was destroyed by a long-range rocket launched from Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip and close to 100 rockets and mortars were fired to communities in the south.

“Imagine 60 rockets in Tel Aviv or Gush Dan or Jerusalem,” Liberman said. “Nobody would stand for it!”

According to Liberman, “peace will come with the Messiah, not before. There’s no way we can have peace with the Arabs around us…peace like in Finland or Canada. That won’t happen. We have to understand where we are, and who we are surrounded by.”

Also speaking at the conference, MK Avi Dichter, current Chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said that the Israeli homefront cannot be turned into a front.

“The homefront is facing threats from the north, south and the west–first it was Iraq but now it’s Iran.”

According to Dichter, who reminded the crowd of the Park Hotel bombing in Netanya in 2002, Israel must do an operation similar to Operation Defense Shield which saw reservists, troops and heavy weaponry deep into the hearts of six major Palestinian cities, surrounding towns and West Bank refugee camps to wipe out Hamas and other terror groups.

“Today, when the military enters Gaza, it will have significantly better capabilities than the Second Lebanon War. But in the end, when you embark on such a campaign, you want to ensure the safety of the soldiers,” he said. “Terror always has a bottom. In order to dry out terror, we must reach the critical mass. You have to kill thousands, arrest thousands more, and the rest will disperse.”

But, he said, “The reality in Gaza is that the group has terror infrastructures with military capabilities, and this is a very problematic situation. We have to destroy the military infrastructure in Gaza, and it will not be by a political move or only by airstrikes.”

In order to restore deterrence with Hamas, the IDF must kill Hamas soldiers and not just attack empty buildings, former IDF chief-of-staff and Blue and White candidate Gabi Ashkenazi said at the Maariv Security Conference in Tel Aviv on Wednesday.

Ashkenazi said it was critical to make Hamas feel the cost of continuing to periodically fire rockets on Israel as well as continuing a year long confrontation on the Gaza border.

He said that “our deterrence has crashed,” but that Hamas is “not an irresolvable problem.”

The former IDF chief acknowledged that Hamas will respond and the situation “will not be simple,” but said there was no choice if Israel is going to succeed in breaking the cycle of violence with Gaza.

Regarding the threat of Iran building threats against Israel in Syria, he said that the only way to remove the Iranians from that front is to threaten Bashar Assad’s rule.

Complimenting the IDF’s attacks on Iran in Syria in recent years, he said that it would not be sufficient to get Tehran to remove its forces.

Israel needs to “change its strategy. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin smiled, but cannot succeed” at getting Iran and Hezbollah out of Syria.

“We need to take a price from Assad,” saying that Israel would need to directly attack Syrian units and threaten Assad himself, as opposed to only attacking Iranian units in Syria.

He explained that only once Assad himself felt the price of having Iranian forces in his country would he force them to leave.

Photo Credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

IDF tanks amassed along the Gaza border, March 26, 2019

Two commemorations of events in the short history of the Jewish-Arab conflict will take place this week, which, ironically enough, also marked the 40th anniversary of the Camp David agreement: Friday marks the first anniversary of the Marches of Return, those weekly riots along the Gaza Strip border which resulted in about 200 dead and close to 20,000 injured—85% of whom were estimated to have been paid by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad; then Saturday marks the 23rd anniversary of Land Day, commemorating the 1976 clash between Israeli Arabs and the Rabin government over the latter’s plans to expropriate state-owned land.

It’s the very definition of a gunpowder keg, two in this case, and it follows a week of alarming clashes between Gaza terrorists and the IDF which included a long-range rocket destroying a home in Israel’s Sharon region near Tel Aviv, and IDF retaliatory bombings of vital terrorist assets across the Gaza Strip.

Israeli security officials are expecting all of this to blow up this weekend, unless Hamas and the Jihad take meaningful, active steps to prevent it. Indeed, in this equation only one side appears to have a choice: the Arabs. Because, should violence erupt on schedule, Prime Minister and Defense Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will have no choice. Less than two weeks from the April 9 election, which will decide his political future, Bibi cannot appear to be appeasing the enemy. He is already being torn apart by Naftali Bennett inside the tent, and Benny Gantz and Avi Gabai who are circling the tent from the outside.

Netanyahu and IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Aviv Kochavi and the command staff spent Tuesday in meetings that resulted, for now, in amassing firepower around the Strip and calling in the reserves. Should war become inevitable, the needed troops will all be in place. Lt. Gen. Kochavi so far has been more aggressive than his predecessor, Gadi Eizenkot, who allowed for long lags between Arab attacks and IDF retaliation, frustration the nation and confusing the troops. Should there be a clash, Kochavi is more likely to inflict great pain on the Strip.

Tuesday also saw a string of minor Arab provocations: a rocket over Ashkelon; a group of Arabs who crossed the border to set fire to an abandoned IDF post and raise the Palestinian flag; and dozens of balloon clusters carrying explosive charges into Israel, at least four of which started fires in Israeli settlements. On Wednesday Israeli schools near Gaza have opened as usual – a sign that the security apparatus is not expecting serious clashes today.

However, on Wednesday morning Ma’an reported that four youths were shot dead in clashes with Israeli forces in the Deheisheh refugee camp south of Bethlehem, reminding us that danger lurks not only in Gaza this weekend.

Despite his hurried departure from the US on Monday, Netanyahu did not assemble his security cabinet, most likely because he was reluctant to give his nemesis Naftali Bennett, who keeps demanding the role of defense minister, to lecture the PM in his newly adapted, take-no-prisoners style, like this recent post:

“I said from the morning that whoever runs away from terrorism – terrorism pursues him, and that’s exactly what happened. […] I call on Prime Minister Netanyahu to defeat Hamas and not allow it to turn the residents of the south into Hamas hostages. We know what needs to be done and how it should be done. I call on the prime minister – give the IDF the order to neutralize and defeat Hamas.”

It continues to be a tense weekend, folks. Stay tunes.