Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy announced this week that he opposes Israel’s invasion of Gaza and removal of Hamas, following a massacre by the terror group that left thousands of Israeli civilians killed and scores of Israelis and Americans still held hostage.
“From a U.S. perspective, from an Israel perspective, how is this actually going to achieve a good result?” Ramaswamy told Tucker Carlson in an interview posted Wednesday night on X (formerly Twitter) of Israel’s operation against Hamas currently underway:
And my concern right now, and as we’re having this conversation, it appears imminent that Israel is going to mount a ground invasion into Gaza. I’m concerned that a ground invasion into Gaza without clearly defined objectives is going to be the start of another no-win war that is not good for Israel, and not good for the United States.
Ramaswamy continued by stating his theory that, by invading Gaza, Israel would be crossing a “red line” of Hezbollah’s, another militant group stationed north of Israel, in Lebanon, which would trigger a “perfectly appropriate” two-front war, and leave Israel “mired in a ground conflict,” which, he claimed, the U.S. would inevitably end up fighting.
“There’s no way you’re really going to avoid some level of U.S. involvement there,” Ramaswamy said to Carlson.
He then went on to predict that this series of military interactions would trigger a region-wide conflict involving extremist groups in Iraq and Yemen. Ultimately, he posited, the power vacuum created by the removal of Hamas in Gaza, coupled with a radicalized population coming out of the war, would produce “Hamas 2.0, with a bunch of radicalized Palestinians.”
“We don’t have, from Israel, a clear sense of what the objectives are,” he told Carlson.
Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant outlined Israel’s goals in the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip on Friday, saying that Israel aimed to destroy the Palestinian terrorist group and, after establishing control, hand authority to a new “security regime” in charge.
The Times of Israel reported:
“We are in the first phase, in which a military campaign is taking place with [airstrikes] and later with a [ground] maneuver with the purpose of destroying operatives and damaging infrastructure in order to defeat and destroy Hamas,” Gallant says.
He says the second phase will be continued fighting but at a lower intensity as troops work to “eliminate pockets of resistance.”
“The third step will be the creation of a new security regime in the Gaza Strip, the removal of Israel’s responsibility for day-to-day life in the Gaza Strip, and the creation of a new security reality for the citizens of Israel and the residents of the [area surrounding Gaza],” he says.
Also on Friday, Israel began to evacuate the town of Kiryat Shmona, the northernmost urban area in Israel, because of the possibility of war with Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah.
The Times of Israel reported:
The evacuation comes amid repeated rocket and missile attacks by the Hezbollah terror group and other allied Palestinian factions targeting northern Israel.
Yesterday, three people were wounded in a rocket attack on the city.
Kiryat Shmona has a population of some 22,000 residents, though many have already left amid the ongoing tensions.
Israel is evacuating all towns within two kilometers of the border with Lebanon. Both the U.S. and Israel have warned Iran against opening a northern front against Israel, which it may do in an effort to save its terrorist proxies in Gaza, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, from destruction.