Knesset member unwavering: Hamas must be confronted

Do you think Hamas could make a little trouble with 20,000 rifles, 1,000 anti-tank missiles and 100 tons of explosives?

Yuval Steinitz sure does.

Those figures come courtesy of Shin Bet, and represent the estimated amount of armament smuggled into Gaza annually.

"We are speaking about enough to supply four to five infantry brigades," said Steinitz, a Likudnik Knesset member and former chair of the Foreign Affairs and Defense committees. "A year ago, Hamas was still only a terror group and now they're in power. Step by step, they've gained more and more political power. And in the meanwhile, they're building a real terrorist army in Gaza, not just a guerilla group.

"It's very clear to almost all Israelis, you know," he continued. "People are just amazed to see our security and diplomatic situations deteriorating in just a year."

Steinitz, a former Peace Now activist and philosophy professor who drifted right following the implosion of the Oslo Accords, was in the Bay Area Thursday, April 12 on a national tour set up by American Friends of Likud. He attended a private luncheon in Piedmont before lecturing at Palo Alto's Orthodox Congregation Emek Beracha in the afternoon.

Recent polls have put Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's approval ratings in the single digits and, in his public appearances, the Likudnik Steinitz is happy to join the chorus: He comes to bury Olmert, not to praise him.

With an eye on Israel's upcoming elections, Steinitz, who has salt-and-pepper hair and bears a resemblance to Christopher Guest, offers a wan smile and admits that things "are worse for the country, but better for us."

Steinitz believes Israel lost its upper hand when it continued to refer to Hamas as terrorists but ceased to treat the organization as such. If Israel truly believes Hamas is a terror organization — which it does — then it should be arresting and killing its members as it did before, he contends.

Even allowing the group to run in the Palestinian elections was a grave error, he insists.

Within the Oslo agreement "there are clear paragraphs about how organizations that do not recognize Israel's right to exist cannot participate in Palestinian elections," he said. "Olmert missed his opportunity on this. He gave up after some very, very light pressure from Condi Rice."

It wasn't the first time, he maintains. "[Olmert] missed opportunity after opportunity to intercept this terror government, which is very similar in its ideology to the Taliban of Afghanistan," he said.

Steinitz hasn't been pleased by much since Ariel Sharon fell into a coma. He recently met with the Democratic congressional delegation, which included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), on its Mideast tour. And although he disagrees with the notion of visiting Syria, he's mystified by Olmert's claim that the Democrats mishandled his diplomatic message to Bashar Assad.

"I do believe they were misled [by Olmert]," he said.

Steinitz also can't understand why Mahmoud Abbas, deemed a worthless negotiating partner years ago, is suddenly kosher once again, especially since he is part of a Hamas coalition government.

"This is ridiculous. Imagine someone saying, 'I cannot negotiate with the prime minister of Israel, but I will speak with the defense minister or the agriculture minister,'" Steinitz said.

It's just a matter of time before Hamas' "massive terror army" begins spraying Israel proper with its illegal arms cache, Steinitz said. It's something he and others have likened to the long and thinly veiled Hezbollah buildup in the south of Lebanon.

The ambiguous outcome of that war was particularly galling to Steinitz, whose Foreign Affairs and Defense committees informed then-Prime Minister Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz in 2004 that a campaign against Hezbollah in the south of Lebanon would stall and fail if Israeli ground troops didn't sweep over the border within a matter of days.

"We missed a real opportunity — a golden opportunity — to gain victory over these Iranian-armed [terrorists], who have threatened the north of Israel for so long," he said.

"The government was so clumsy and hesitant, we were unable to protect ourselves."