Local Editor

“Israeli” War Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Monday renewed calls for a military offensive in Gaza, saying that the “Israeli” entity has exhausted all other recourse in reaching an agreement with Hamas to bring months of violence along the border to a definitive end.

Lieberman said that the time has come for the entity’s security cabinet “to make decisions”, as Egyptian and UN-led efforts to broker an agreement to end months of violence on the border in exchange for a boost in humanitarian aid for the enclave have yielded only limited results.

“I think that we have reached a point where decisions must be made. We have exhausted all options. We have given the UN’s special envoy [Nickolay Mladenov] to take steps here, to Egypt, to Qatar, and [Hamas’] message is clear,” Lieberman said at the start of a Knesset Foreign Affairs and War Committee meeting.

“I do not believe in any arrangement with Hamas. It does not work, it has not worked in the past, it will not work in the future,” Lieberman said.

He slammed Hamas for demanding a deal which calls for the lifting of the entity’s blockade on the Strip without offering any agreement on captive “Israelis” or the remains of soldiers the group is holding, without relinquishing its core ideology that calls for the destruction of “Israel”, and without stopping its manufacturing of rockets or digging of tunnels to attack the apartheid entity.

The Qatari fuel deal was suspended by the “Israeli” entity in response to the ongoing border clashes, and Lieberman has ordered the “Kerem Shalom” goods crossing and “Erez” border crossing periodically closed and re-opened multiple times over the past several months as the violence ebbed and flowed.

Lieberman alleged that Hamas used the Great March of Return protests to dictate the situation on the ground and use it to further their own ends.

More than 200 Palestinians had been martyred during the daily protests along the border, as “Israeli” Occupation Forces implemented the shoot-to-kill policy upon unarmed protesters, reporters, and medics.

Meanwhile, Egyptian efforts to secure an arrangement pushed forward Monday with the chairman of Hamas' political wing Ismail Haniyeh and Hamas' leader in the Gaza Strip Yahya Sinwar meeting with two Egyptian intelligence officials in the coastal enclave.

Haniyeh, Sinwar and the Egyptian officials were expected to discuss intra-Palestinian reconciliation.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team