By Stan Goodenough
Dec 12, 2007
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt-Gen Gabi Ashkenazi said Wednesday the day is drawing near when Israel will have to send ground forces back into the Gaza Strip to clean out the terrorists there.
Gaza has become a mecca for terrorists and a source of daily attacks against civilians in the Jewish state since Israel abandoned it to the PLO in August 2005.
According to The Jerusalem Post, Ashkenazi made his remarks in an address to the Conference on Security Challenges at the Tel Aviv Institute for National Security Studies.
He spoke shortly after at least 20 Kassam rockets were fired into the Negev by the "Palestinians" in Gaza.
"It is not possible to defeat a terrorist organization without having control on the ground," he said, pointing to the impressive results of the IDF's war on terror conducted in Samaria and Judea over the past two years.
Unlike Gaza, which was surrendered to the terrorist Palestinian Authority two-and-a-half years ago by a weak Israeli government, Samaria and Judea (which Israel's enemies call the West Bank) remain so far pretty much under IDF control.
Terrorist suspects are arrested in round-the-clock operations in this part of the country virtually every night.
Ashkenazi's remarks came just hours after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's security cabinet voted against a strong military response to Wednesday morning's missile attacks.
Despite the fact that more than 2000 rockets have fallen on the Negev town of Sderot this year alone, the government's efforts to stop them have been totally ineffective.
Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal resigned Wednesday, saying he was no longer willing to bear responsibility for a town abandoned by the Olmert regime.