Israel-Hamas conflict: ​Col Tim Collins urges Israel to learn lessons from Northern Ireland in its attack on Gaza

​​The terror attack on 7 October – the worst in the history of the state – also left a further 3,300 Israelis injured and 150 hostages taken. Palestinian officials say some 1,400 people have since died in Israeli retaliatory airstrikes.

Col Collins, a former Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment, is best known for his eve-of-battle-speech in the Iraq War in 2003.

The Belfast man said that he fears a full-scale invasion of Gaza by Israel will end in a bloody quagmire but advised that there is another way.

It looks as though Israel intends to use the same post 911 "shock and awe" tactic used by the US in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he said.

The military doctrine emphasises overwhelming force at the outset of a military action to terrify the enemy.

"All the signs are that its [Israel's] government is preparing to retaliate on a massive scale, mobilising the country's formidable armed forces against Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas," he wrote in the Daily Mail.

However he said that just as Iraq turned out to be "a calamitous error, fuelling a lasting cycle of violence," so he feared any attempt by Israel to exact vengeance with military might could be just as disastrous.

He has visited Iraq and the wider region many times since retiring from the military and visited the West Bank of Israel earlier this year.

"And I am certain that a policy seeking to pulverise Gaza, with the aim of permanently destroying Hamas, would be utterly counter-productive. It would cause civilian casualties on an epic scale, as well as a huge loss of life among the Israeli forces, while also building a cult of martyrdom among the terrorists that would affect all of us."

Hamas would be sure to draw Israeli troops into a street-by-street fight in Gaza, sacrificing civilians to worsen the 'optics' further for Israel.

"As far as the terror group is concerned, civilian Palestinians are nothing more than human sandbags to be sacrificed at will. The group's goal is not to defeat its enemy in traditional combat, but to ensure enough innocent Arab lives are taken, over a sufficiently long time, that the screams of protest from the international community become deafening.

"Israel will then be forced to make a humiliating retreat, having failed to reach a single one of its objectives."

A full invasion, he said, would be "a bloody quagmire".

He added: "It would chew up thousands of troops for little or no benefit, and poison the Arab world, and to a certain extent the international community, against the Jewish state. Alas, it looks like Israel is set to take precisely this route."

If Israel succeeds in taking control of Gaza, he fears the result would be the breakdown of civil society, a gargantuan body count and Israel's return to “pariah status” in the Middle East.

But there is an alternative approach which could strengthen Israel's standing on the international stage, he argued.

Instead of slaughtering Hamas with major civilian casualties inside Gaza, he recommended launching limited ground incursions at specific targets and, while also encouraging the Palestinian political party Fatah, which previously ran Gaza, to take back control from Hamas.

"Most Gazans are fed up with Hamas's vicious paramilitaries, whose fanatical anti-Semitism and corruption have left the territory in a state of devastated economic neglect," he added.

The overthrow of Hamas by Fatah would be a step forward for democracy in the area and would isolate the theocratic Iranian regime which has long bankrolled and armed Hamas, he said.

"Israel should not play into Iran's hands. And as an Irishman, I know why.

"In 1972, soon after the Troubles had been rekindled, support for the IRA soared after the Bloody Sunday massacre, when British paratroopers opened fire on a Catholic protest march through the city of Derry. Fourteen innocent people were killed and there was to be no peace in the province for another three decades.

"The decision is Israel's. Do they, in a spasm of vengeance, unleash a flood of Bloody Sundays in Gaza? Or could they, dare they, act with reason and mercy?"

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