Britain is heading straight for a trap laid by Hamas terrorists, a top Tory has warned.
Tobias Ellwood has said the West needs to be ‘four or five steps ahead’ of the terror group after they first launched horrific attacks against Israel on Saturday.
He warned that while it is ‘absolutely right’ for the UK to back Israel, Hamas is aiming for the conflict to ‘spread beyond Gaza’.
“I think it’s been absolutely right that we stand by Israel. Hamas’s intent is very, very clear indeed,” he told GB News.
“War with Israel, fight using any means, however barbaric, and widen the conflict beyond Gaza.
“So it’s quite right that the UK, the US and the West stands by Israel. It faces the biggest security threat since the state was formed.
“With Israel on the West, much as we want to see Hamas neutralized and defeated. Having seen his barbaric terrorist actions, Hamas has actually removed its right to participate in representing Gaza and indeed the Palestinians any further.”
He added his worries that Hamas ‘wants a ground war’ and doesn’t care who gets caught in the middle.
“We need to be thinking not just operationally but strategically too, not thinking one chest move ahead, but four or five and recognizing there will be major consequences to a ground attack.
“And we have to ask yourself, does this help or hinder the overall mission to remove Hamas?
“My worry is that this is deliberately going to escalate beyond the West Bank, beyond eastern Jerusalem, beyond Lebanon, and indeed elsewhere.
“And I fear that we are falling into a trap because Hamas has no care, no interest to represent those 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.
“It wants a ground war. It wants this war to spread. It wants Palestinians and Arabs far away at least to support its cause. And I think it’s only a matter of time before we see serious unrest in a Western capital.
“We already see tensions rising. So I think we need to be really clear what the mission is, the removals, the surgical removal and replacement of Hamas and the isolation of its pay masters, Iran, that we do not spend enough time talking about because vengeance alone, although understandable, is not a strategy.”
His comments come as more than 1,300 people died in Israel in the Hamas attacks, with 1,500 killed in Gaza since Israel launched counter strikes.
