Israel expanded its ground offensive Thursday in an effort to stop the attacks by Hamas against the Jewish state after attempting to do so via air strikes, and former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra, says that "Israel has
every right to go into Gaza."
"Israel has to do that," Hoekstra told John Bachman on "America's Forum" on
Newsmax TV on Friday.
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"You can't be a small nation-state like Israel and as vulnerable as they are and be in a position to have rockets coming in from three different sides of your country," he explained.
"So going into Gaza, eliminating or minimizing this threat, is exactly what they need to be doing," the former Michigan congressman added.
The goal of Israel is to "deliver [Hamas] a stunning, military setback"
"They want to go in, wipe out the infrastructure, come back to their more defendable borders and, hopefully, teach Hamas a lesson," Hoekstra said.
However, "history will tell us that Hamas will come back, they will reconstitute themselves and we may be seeing something like this again in four or five years."
Israel made the decision to significantly expand the ground offensive Thursday after more than 2,000 rockets over a 10-day period failed to end the rocket attacks from Hamas.
"We chose to begin this operation after the other options were exhausted and with the understanding that without the operation the price we will pay can be very high," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Hoekstra said that one of the challenges in the world today when it comes to solving this conflict is that "the fabric of the relationships there have been totally destroyed."
"The relationship between the U.S. and Egypt — when we supported the Muslim brotherhood, has frayed that relationship," he explained.
"The relationship between President [Barack] Obama and President Netanyahu — that is a frayed if not a destroyed relationship," he added.
"The relationships that you need to get to and broker a solution — they are just not there to make anything happen and happen successfully."
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