As the air strikes against Hamas in Gaza entered its second week, Israel’s Ambassador to India Mark Sofer has made it clear that his country would continue the military operations till it had deprived the Hamas of its capability to launch rocket attacks into Israeli areas.

“One thing is certain. There will not be a return to status quo ante in the region. Hopefully, the operation would not take long,” Sofer told The Indian Express, claiming that extra efforts were being taken to ensure there were no civilian casulties. “In fact, our hospitals are accepting non-Hamas civilian casualties, if any, for medical treatment.”

He said the Israeli action against Hamas, in which more than 400 people had so far been killed, had been necessitated by repeated provocations from the other side which had fired as many as 37,000 rockets in the last seven years into residential areas in Israel. About 3,000 of these rockets had been launched in the last year alone, he said. “There comes a time when a country has to decide that it cannot take any more, that enough is enough and action has to be taken,” Sofer said.

Having been a target in the Mumbai attacks too, Sofer desisted from comparing the contrasting approaches, but said while no two situations were alike, India faced a similar threat. “India will have to make its own decisions regarding that. As a foreign country, we are no one to say what India should do. And of course, no two situations are exactly alike,” he said, but added that Israel had a very sympathetic view of the difficult situation that India was facing.

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