Hidden in their underground tunnels, senior Hamas terrorist officials use the local population as cannon fodder as they launch rockets at Israel from civilian areas. Israel must ensure the people residing in the Gaza Strip are evacuated from these terrorist sites before striking Hamas, a task made more difficult by the fact that Hamas prevents them from evacuating at gunpoint.
Instead of turning Gaza into Singapore and thereby signaling to Israel and the world that peace is possible, Hamas leaders have led Gaza's population down a bloody path to the conquest of "Palestine."
Having never actually made it to Israel, the Hamas leadership has now decided to send the people of Gaza to engage in a direct confrontation with Israel at the border. They will, of course, remain hidden in the depths of the terror tunnels during the prowwww. Members of the Palestinian Authority pulled a similar move in 2006, when they mobilized the masses, furious at the corruption in Ramallah, to engage in the futile confrontation with Israel known as the Second Intifada.
And so now, senior Hamas officials who routinely shoot their own people are instructing the masses to direct their frustrations at this organization's military, political and economic failures toward the illusion of a hopeless "return to Palestine" and embarrass Israel in international media outlets.
Despite the attempt by Hamas to differentiate this "mass act of nonviolence" from its military campaign, this planned protest is nothing more than the cynical use of the Gazan population. The planting of an explosive device beneath a Palestinian flag alongside attempts to sabotage Israeli engineering equipment on the border fence make it is clear this planned protest is just as much of an aggressive and violent act as the launch of rockets or the use of attack tunnels against Israel.
Israel will be forced to use flyers, media announcements, traps, snipers and riot control tactics to keep Gazans from approaching the border with Israel. But Israel must also make it clear to Hamas that when the IDF acts in response to the confrontation, its main target will not be the human shields the terrorist organization has situated at the border but Hamas targets inside Gaza.
