ISRAELI forces will be trying to gain intelligence on the location of hostages before the start of large-scale military operations in Gaza, according to security expert Major-General Chip Chapman.
The former head of counter-terrorism at the Ministry of Defence told GB News: “The Israeli war cabinet said there’s four tasks, one of those tasks is getting the hostages back.
“The fact that they haven’t done the ground invasion of Gaza yet is actually a good thing in terms of trying to do intelligence development, to try and locate and find those hostages.
“One of the things which happened overnight was the Israelis offering $250,000 for information from those that are in Gaza on tactical tip-offs, as it were, on where they are.
“So that’s another string to the bow because there’ll also be technical and other human intelligence means to do that.”
In a discussion with Bev Turner and Emily Carver, he continued: “I think the diplomacy, certainly from the American side, I think is working quite well at the moment, it’s behind the scenes.
“You’ll see Hamas continuing rocket fire, of course you’ll see the Israelis going through what we call a joint prioritised target list of Hamas military and dual use targets, but no overt invasion and no overt escalation from the northern border.
“That’s within tolerance levels when you have the to and fro with a few rockets from Hezbollah at the moment.”
Asked about the impact on the UK, he said: “Well, some of it will come here in terms of increased threats, possibly increased terrorism…the fracturing of societies, with Jewish kids not being able to go to school, hate crimes and all that, that does fracture society and that’s not good for community cohesion for the future.
“While this plays out, all those things will be exacerbated for the future.”
