Israeli forces guarding the Gaza border were instructed Monday, April 2, to remove the gloves and take action for pre-empting Hamas’ escalating border provocations. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that this change of policy was set by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman and IDF chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gady Eisenkot. They saw that Hamas had been encouraged into ramping up its aggression by the clashes that occurred Friday, which left 17 Palestinians dead and hundreds injured. The IDF was therefore instructed to adopt new tactics, before the violence practiced on the Gaza border got out of hand and spread to other anti-Israel fronts in Judea and Samaria, or even Lebanon.The exact nature of those IDF tactics is not immediately known, except that they deviate sharply from the defensive posture adopted on Friday and Saturday by the troops guarding the Gaza border. The IDF continues to be authorized to use force when necessary within the IDF’s rules of engagement. Hamas was cautioned Monday against continuing to stage provocations every few hours or else face a harsh IDF riposte.
DEBKAfile reported earlier Monday:
Friday’s mass Palestinian assault on the Gaza-Israel border, successfully pushed back by the IDF, was the first round of Hamas’ latest tactic for fighting Israel.
Israel’s political leaders almost across the spectrum voiced their thanks to IDF troops for not letting a single Palestinian rioter cross the fence and so allowing the country to celebrate the Passover Eve Seder in peace. The very idea of an inquiry into a “determined and proportionate” defensive operation was widely ridiculed. In the first Palestinian rush on the Gaza-Israeli border fence on Friday, March 30, IDF counter-measures, including gunfire, killed 15 Palestinians and injured hundreds But this has not deterred Hamas from going forward with Round 2 of its six-week master plan for repeatedly buffeting at Israel’s border defenses. They believe that when they find a gap in the Israeli wall, the Arab and international communities will come to their aid.
So far, this had not happened. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has come out as the sole champion of Hamas, which is listed as a terrorist organization by most Western governments. But Erdogan had seized on the Gaza flare-up for his own game. The Syrian platform slipped out of his hands when the US vetoed plans for his army to advance across northern Syria and into Iraq and crush all the Kurds in its path. So Erdogan found another platform in Gaza. However, not a single Arab leader of note supported Hamas’ “March for the Return.”
Nonetheless, Hamas is sure it has finally found a winning tactic against Israel, by turning the civilian population, heavily brainwashed into believing that a successful “March for the Return” would solve its problems, into a human battering ram for trampling the border fence and surging across into Israel. READ MORE
