Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear the fight with Hamas isn't over, even after the Israeli military took out the terror group's leader. But the Jewish state's next steps may depend less on what happens on Nov. 5 than what happens on Jan. 20, foreign policy analyst Walid Phares told Newsmax on Thursday.
Phares said on "Rob Schmitt Tonight," "Netanyahu told us the couple words that are very important: 'It's not over yet.' So the Israeli plan is much more strategic, much more global.
"Yes, of course, whomever is going to be, you know, elected on the fifth [of November] will be very important. But it's the 20th of January where policies really are going to be changing. So Netanyahu knows that between now and then, many, many things can be done. Including forcing this, this continuous wave of attacks to put them both off balance."
Phares stressed that even though the leader of Hamas is gone, "Hezbollah still has thousands of armed people. So it's not a militia at this point in time. It's a mass of armed people. They would need different dealing with it. The same goes for Hamas, maybe lesser numbers, but the real target is going to be the Islamic regime in Iran. Watch and see."
Phares did say that eliminating Yahya Sinwar was very important and will likely set Hamas back by "months or years."
Phares said Sinwar "has been in the field for the last 20 years. You have, he has formed personally hundreds and hundreds of commanders… It's going to be very difficult for that third line to produce someone like him. They're going to need months and years because he knew all these heads of the units, and he only understood who would be his deputies, and he had the plans."
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Kate McManus ✉
Kate McManus is a New Jersey-based Newsmax writer who's spent more than two decades as a journalist.
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