Itongadol.- Defense Minister Moshe Ya\’alon said Monday Israel was preparing for the possibility of another war against Hamas in Gaza.
"We\’ve been enjoying unprecedented quiet, Hamas hasn\’t fired one bullet," Ya\’alon said aboard the USS Carney, an American battleship, which is currently docking in Haifa while taking part in the joint American-Israeli military exercise Juniper Cobra.
"It\’s growing in power, we didn\’t think otherwise," he added. "Hamas is trying to arm itself with rockets but it\’s having difficulties importing (rockets) as it did before and it has to manufacture them. That is why they\’re conducting all of the tests of firing rockets into the sea. There is also a shortage of materials to manufacture rockets with and they\’re trying to improvise – and of course digging defensive and offensive tunnels, we are not fooling ourselves to think that they aren\’t."
"We\’ve been preparing for the possibility that at some point a front will be opened in the south, and we\’ll have to deal with it," the defense minister continued. "We’re not stagnate and we operate both with defensive and offensive measures."
US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, who hosted Ya\’alon aboard the USS Carney, noted that Israel and the US have been "working together to develop technological measures to discover and destroy tunnels, and Congress has approved a special budget which led to progress in the development work."