Dave Sharma: The path is set for Israel to completely destroy Hamas

Former Australian Ambassador to Israel Dave Sharma says Israel’s leaders will not rest until Hamas is destroyed, it’s leaders eliminated and it’s military apparatus dismantled.

My three daughters still have vivid memories of an air raid siren piercing the silence of an early Saturday morning in Israel.

Woken from sleep by anxious parents, they were carried down to the bomb shelter in the basement of the Australian Ambassador’s residence in Israel.

We sat there for seemingly an eternity, alongside our geriatric golden retriever, waiting for the barrage of rockets from Hamas to land, trying to keep the children calm. This was in 2014, the year of Israel’s last major conflict with Hamas, which lasted 50 days and cost several thousand lives.

But the fear my family felt on that day pales into insignificance compared with the fear felt by Israelis as terror was unleashed on their nation over the weekend.

The harrowing images of rampaging terrorists, children forced to witness the execution of their parents, young adults running quite literally for their lives and infants and grandparents abducted at gunpoint and paraded as captives through the streets of Gaza have opened a deep wound on the nation of Israel.

The world has been rightly shocked at the sheer barbarism and monstrosity being proudly proclaimed by Hamas terrorists.

This day will live in infamy for Israel, a September 11 moment: in its unexpectedness, in its scale of casualties and in the deep shock it has delivered to Israel’s sense of security.

A man runs as fire burns after rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip into Ashkelon in Israel.

And just as the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States led to a profound and dramatic military response, so Israel’s response will be of a similar order.

As Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said just hours after the attack began, Israel is now at war.

Israel’s leaders will not rest until Hamas is comprehensively destroyed, its military leadership eliminated and its military apparatus entirely dismantled.

Only a full-scale defeat of Hamas will suffice. Within a day or two at most, Israel’s defence force will almost certainly commence a full-scale ground invasion of Gaza, seeking to rout Hamas and reoccupy the entire territory.

Hamas is deeply embedded in civilian infrastructure in Gaza.

It uses the whole of Gaza’s civilian population as a human shield. There are headquarters under hospitals, missile silos in schools and ammunition stores in apartment buildings.

So the civilian death toll from Israel’s military operation is likely to be high.

Hamas has abducted over 100 Israelis as hostage and taken them back to Gaza. They will be used for political propaganda, military leverage and as human shields.

Their presence will create agonising dilemmas for Israel as it goes about this military operation.

This bloody but localised conflict could also spread much wider.

Hamas’ leadership has already called for other terrorist groups to rise up. Hezbollah, an Iranian-armed terror group in southern Lebanon, may seek to take advantage of Israel’s disarray and attack across Israel’s northern border.

Others, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the West Bank, may also be tempted to launch attacks, meaning Israel could face a war on several fronts.

We may see Hamas sympathisers engage in copycat terror attacks across the west, including here in Australia, a threat we must take seriously. Iran’s potential involvement further raises the prospect of serious escalation.

Fire and smoke rise above buildings during an Israeli air strike in Gaza City. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to reduce Hamas's Gaza hideouts to "rubble".

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Iran helped Hamas plot the attack against Israel over several weeks, with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, giving the green light to the operation last week.

Iran has long-standing links with Hamas but a direct Iranian role in this attack on Israel, if confirmed, would constitute a provocation that Israel could not leave unanswered.

For Israel to re-establish deterrence, it would need to strike Iran directly, at the ‘head of the snake’ as Israeli generals describe it, and exact a punishment that dealt a serious blow to the Iranian regime.

The long-standing but largely covert struggle between Israel and Iran could break out into open hostility.

The war now underway between Israel and Gaza will be tragic enough but Iran’s potential involvement raises the stakes.

There is a real risk that this war becomes wider and deadlier, engulfing the entire region.

Senior Israeli figures have described to me Hamas’ incursion as nothing short of a catastrophe.

It is clear there was an intelligence failure, the most serious in 50 years since Israel was surprised by the simultaneous invasion by the Syrian and Egyptian armies in the Yom Kippur War.

But there was also a clear operational failure. Hamas fighters overran Israel’s borders and overcame security barriers seemingly without detection.

They roamed freely, occupying Israeli towns, killing and capturing residents in their homes at will, and penetrating over twenty kilometres inside Israel.

The Gaza Division and the Southern Command of the Israeli Defence Force, entrusted with the security of this part of Israel, were painfully slow to detect, mobilise and respond, leaving citizens at the mercy of marauding terrorists.

Israel will defeat Hamas. That is not in doubt.

But the repercussions of this terrorist attack will spread far and wide and in a way that we cannot yet predict.

Dave Sharma is the former member for Wentworth and former Australian Ambassador to Israel