An Israeli confrontation with Palestinian factions in the besieged Gaza Strip is inevitable and it is only a matter of time before it happens, the former head of the Israeli army’s Southern Command, Brigadier General Itay Virov, said yesterday.
During a meeting with the new graduates of Yonatan, a pre-army preparatory programme, he said: “Each passing day gets us farther away from the previous campaign, but closer to the next one. It’s only a matter of time.”
He added: “We paid a heavy price in ‘Operation Protective Edge’. You don’t have to be a great military man or an erstwhile intelligence operative to know that these fields will know the treads of our tanks, that infantrymen will run to the fence here and that the houses in Gaza not yet rehabilitated from the last campaign will suffer our wrath in the next one.”
According to Ynet News, he continued: “We’re standing here, 800 meters from the border fences and Gaza’s immense tunnel enterprises, and we’re still here—that’s victory.”
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