The Nexus

When a network of terrorists openly voices its desire to obliterate a nation and launches rockets into that country that kill and injure multiple people, it cannot be expected that the attacked nation stands idly by as their civilians are killed.

This is exactly the situation that faced the small state of Israel five weeks ago, as the terrorist organization Hamas continued to fire rockets into Israel from Gaza.

And although the ensuing attacks on Hamas were aggressive, they were nonetheless necessary and overdue.

Israel’s main objectives were to eliminate the extensive underground tunnels that transport those rockets and other weapons into Gaza and to target Hamas networking sites.

Unfortunately, in a densely populated area such as the Gaza Strip, a large number of casualties were inevitable.

Despite Israel’s warning to the Palestinian people to get out as quickly as possible and halting fire for extended periods of time throughout the offensive to allow the evacuations, only a small number heeded the warnings.

This led to a large, albeit disputed number of people killed.

Even the death toll numbers have been given out through Hamas officials, calling into question the legitimacy of such numbers.

Many of these deaths could have been prevented if Hamas had respect for the Palestinians. When Hamas claimed power in Palestine in recent years, it wasn’t with open arms from the Palestinian people.

Hamas has repeatedly used these innocent civilians as pawns in this situation to garner public support. During the Israeli invasion, Hamas set up shop in UN schools and hospitals in hopes of evading Israeli fire.

Because rockets were being fired from these locations into Israel, these sites were bombed. There is no debate that a wide-spread organization like Hamas is difficult to weed out, but the attempts to defeat it in those circumstances weren’t done without merit.

If Hamas hadn’t exploited the civilians and locations that sheltered the innocent and should be demilitarized, the world could have seen a much different outcome to the three-week conflict.

The defiance of the terrorist organization can be seen from its grasp on life in Gaza.

NBC News recently featured a story on a Palestinian man who is helping to rebuild the aforementioned trafficking tunnels and said that they should have the majority of the tunnels back up and running in a few weeks.

But his work on these projects, like hundreds of others, isn’t necessarily done out of want but rather necessity.

With no direct ties to Hamas, these Palestinians are still paid lucrative amounts of money by the group to maintain the tunnels, money that is used to support their families. It invariably seems as if these men have no choice.

So, it now appears that the days of the cease-fire will be coming to an end. Hamas obviously has shown no want for peace and shows signs of regaining military strength.

A nation like Israel has every right to retaliate when threatened and attacked and should do everything to protect its own people, even if it means loss of life.