Israel looking a preempting Hamas weapons buildup

Washington Times:

Applying a lesson from the recent war against Hezbollah, Israeli leaders are increasingly talking about staging a pre-emptive military offensive in the Gaza Strip in order to avert a Hamas buildup of improved missiles.
Israeli forces already operating in the Gaza Strip Monday killed at least nine Palestinians and wounded 20. But officials and politicians say a broader operation against Hamas is necessary if Israel wants to deny it the ability to stockpile weapons like the Shi'ite militia Hezbollah, which was able to build up its arsenal during six years of relative calm.
"We should not allow Hamas to build in Gaza what Hezbollah built in Lebanon," said Ephraim Sneh, Labor parliamentarian. "[A broad offensive] seems to me almost unavoidable because the accumulation of arms in Gaza in the hands of Hamas and other terror organization is intolerable."
The talk of an escalation in Gaza comes as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed in principle to bring a far-right party, Yisrael Beitenu, into his coalition.
The move stabilized a coalition whose foundations emerged from the Lebanon war severely shaken. But it also reorients the political constellation of Mr. Olmert's government toward the right.
Israeli army units, which retook the corridor in Gaza along the Egyptian border this week, have uncovered more than a dozen smuggling tunnels used to sneak weapons, money and contraband into Gaza from Egypt.
At the same time, Israeli intelligence officials say they think that Syria and Iran are supplying Hamas with the advanced anti-tank missiles that turned armored vehicles like the Merkava tank into a sitting ducks, according to local press reports.
Hamas is also thought to be receiving longer-range rockets like the Katyusha missiles fired by the hundreds into northern Israeli this past summer.
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Israel needs to destroy Hamas. If Israel does not destroy Hamas, Hamas will destroy Israel. That is Hamas' reason for existance and Israel ignores that at its peril. The tunnels and the arms buildup are a causes belli for Israel and it cannot afford to make a gift of time to Hamas to exploit the new arms.