An IDF military campaign to destroy Hamas in Rafah must take plan, even if it harms Israel’s relations with the United States and isolates it on the international stage, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer said ahead of his trip next week to Washington.
“We’re gonna go in and finish this job, and anybody who doesn’t understand that doesn’t understand that the nerve of the Jews, that existential nerve, was touched” by Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7, which sparked the Gaza war, Dermer said.
He spoke on an episode of the Call Me Back podcast with Dan Senor amid a stiff diplomatic battle with the Biden administration about Rafah, which is last Hamas stronghold in Gaza.
The Rafah operation is “going to happen, and it will happen, even if Israel is forced to fight alone, even if the entire world turns on Israel, including the United States,” he stated.
Israel is determined to destroy Hamas, even if it “leads to a potential breach with the United States,” Dermer said.
In Cairo US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the Biden administration does not support a major Rafah operation. In Washington US official are expected to lay out for Dermer and Israeli National Security Adviser Tzahi Hanegbi alternative plans, which they claim could eliminate Hamas through targeted operations.
“We will listen to what they have to say,” Dermer said, but a major military operation in Rafah is the only way to destroy Hamas.
He noted that the US and Israel’s other allies, want it to eliminate Hamas but to do so in three weeks and without any civilian casualties.
The importance of destroying Hamas
Taking out Hamas is not only necessary to safeguard Israel is also critical to plans for the day after the war and for normalization with Saudi Arabia, Dermer stated.
“It’s impossible to get to the day-after in Gaza without destroying Hamas,” Dermer said. “No other Palestinians will step forward to be involved in the leadership of the enclave until they know that the terror group is destroyed,” he said.
“You can have a lot of conversations about the day-after plan, but to do it, before there is a day-after Hamas, it won’t work,” Dermer said.
Separately in the conversation he took issue with Canada’s decision this week to halt arms sales to Israel, something which had already quietly not occurred since January.
“It's going to be a badge of shame for Canada, and it's going to last for a really long time because in years to come and decades to come,” Dermer said.
Years from now people will ask where was Canada why did it abandon Israel in its “darkest hour,” Dermer said.