Israel can declare victory in its fight with Hamas because the tunnels that Hamas had built from Gaza into Israel are destroyed, says Dr. Tawfik Hamid, Senior Fellow and Chair for the Study of Islamic radicalism at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.
"It's absolute victory for Israel because they managed to destroy the tunnels," Hamid told Ed Berliner on "MidPoint" on
Newsmax TV Thursday.
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"The tunnels are very important for Hamas, its economy, its ability to threaten Israel and send suicide bombers," he explained. Destroying the tunnels "will prevent Hamas from a lot of attacks on Israel in the future."
"Just by mere destruction of the tunnels, that's enough to say it is victory," he added.
An extended ceasefire was agreed to on Tuesday.
Both Netanyahu and Hamas claimed victory in the war. However, critics have said that Israel cannot claim victory because Hamas is still able to launch missiles against Israel and the group is still in power.
Dakota Wood of The Heritage Foundation told the "MidPoint" host that "if it's a security win that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu was looking for, then they can claim victory."
Besides the destruction of the tunnels, Israel destroyed about a third of their missiles "in various strikes."
Hamid said that even though the recent ceasefire may mean short-term peace, it will not bring "real" long-term peace.
The ultimate goal of Hamas is "to kill every Jew in the world" and "we'd be deceiving ourselves" if we thought long lasting peace was possible.
"This by itself makes the peace impossible with them," he added.
Both Wood and Dakota say that Israel and Hamas will probably not go more than a year before missiles are fired at each other again.
"They'll take this time to regroup and rearm, to try to rebuild their economy a bit and then you'll see suicide attacks and the Israelis will have to figure out what to do with that next time," Wood added.
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