Former Mossad intelligence agency Director Tamir Pardo warned Tuesday that the threat Gaza Strip-based terrorist groups pose to Israel is greater now than it was prior to the Operation Protective Edge in 2014.
Pardo was speaking at a symposium hosted by the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the IDC Herzliya. According to the Jerusalem Post, he said he was "troubled" by Israel's failure to define its security and diplomatic goals with respect to the Palestinians.
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Israel has "failed to come up with an end game for either Gaza or any the Palestinian issue," Prado said.
The former spy chief said that given Israel's inaction, "all that is left is for random rounds of hostilities to flare up."
Israel "only deals with tactics" and "sends the IDF to put out fires with whatever tools it has and limits on its firepower," without setting any strategic long-term goals, he said.
As for whether a caretaker government can even make such decisions, Pardo said that during the times of former prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon and others, "Leaders ordered major operations even during election season. These operations, if they had failed, could lead to the leaders having to resign – and yet they made the hard decisions."
