Eliran Aharon

Vice President of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security IDF Colonel (Res.) Dr. Eran Lerman spoke to Arutz Sheva about Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas.

“Clearly, the Israeli government and the IDF have made a decision,” Lerman said, “to cross a certain threshold that had not been crossed before, because of the severity, the extension, and the costs of the recent attack; we already lost three lives murdered by Hamas rockets, and that is infinitely more than we had last time because we had practically no losses, except one Palestinian Arab who inadvertently found himself in the range of fire. But at the end of the day this is a clearly more serious situation, it’s driven by Palestinian Islamic Jihad provocations.

“And so Israel is trying to rewrite the rules of the game, with one clear emphasis, and that is that if Hamas wants to survive in Gaza, and Israel is ultimately not interested right now in obliterating them and taking over, but if they want to survive in Gaza it needs to be under conditions of a prolonged ceasefire, and with a curb, by Hamas, on the activity of the sidekick, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is an Iranian proxy, very clearly the element which provoked the recent crisis, and an element that must be brought under very tight control.”

Dr. Lerman served as Deputy Foreign Policy and International Affairs at the National Security Council. He has held senior positions in the Israel Defense Forces for more than 20 years and served as Director of the Israel and Middle East office of the American Jewish Committee for eight years, teaching at the Shalem College in Jerusalem and at the Tel Aviv University and the National Security College.

He is an expert on foreign relations between Israel and the Middle East. A third generation Israeli, Lerman has a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, and later earned a master’s degree in public administration (MPA) from Harvard University.

 Arutz Sheva, 6.5.2019