What happened in Israel’s border communities on Oct. 7 was the predictable result of leaving heavily armed ideologues embedded minutes from
By Aviva Klompas
What happened in Nir Oz and the other border communities was not a lightning strike, but the predictable result of leaving a heavily armed, ideologically driven movement embedded minutes from Israeli homes.
Two years later, the threat remains.
“The only thing standing between the Hamas terrorists still left here and Israeli civilians is the IDF soldiers here,” one officer told me.
Diplomats talk about “the day after,” but the ground tells a different truth: Tunnels still run beneath Gaza; weapons caches remain; and Hamas’ ideology is wholly intact.
No international plan can succeed while this reality persists.
Which brings us back to the UN’s stabilization force. Its success hinges on two principles.
First: Hamas cannot retain any foothold of power.
Any complex of tunnels or any zone where it can operate with impunity becomes a staging ground for rearmament and renewed assault.
Anything less than dismantling Hamas’ military infrastructure risks recreating the exact conditions that made Oct. 7 possible.
Second: Israel cannot outsource its security.
History shows that international monitors and peacekeepers do not prevent terrorism aimed at Israel’s civilians.
Stabilization cannot mean asking Israelis to entrust their safety to outsiders who do not bear the consequences when the system fails.
As Secretary of State Marco Rubio put it: “The Israelis don’t want to govern Gaza. We don’t want to govern Gaza. No country in the Middle East wants to govern Gaza. But it’ll take time to build up that capability, and in the interim someone has to provide security.”
Back in Nir Oz, Irit told me she wants nothing more than to rebuild the community her parents helped found.
But she also told me she checks her door again and again at night, terrified that terrorists could sprint across the fields and break in once more.
The end of a war is not defined by the absence of rockets, or the passage of UN resolutions.424
It is defined by whether families in Nir Oz and Nahal Oz — and someday in Sajaiya, too — can raise their children without fear.
Until Hamas’ foothold is removed entirely, that day cannot come.
