Hamas leaders will ‘pay with their lives’ as Israel vows death penalty

Hamas’ leaders will “pay with their lives” once found after their militants killed over 1,000 innocent civilians in an unprecedented attack, an advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister has exclusively told Daily Express US.

Professor Jacob Nagel, Benjamin Netanyahu’s former acting security advisor, likened the terror group’s surprise assault on the world’s only Jewish state last week to the Nazis’ campaign of terror in the 1940s.

The senior fellow at FDD told Daily Express US in an exclusive interview that Israel needs to “keep our eyes open” for the key figures behind the coordinated attack who remain at large.

He said: “Everyone who was involved in this crime will pay with his life and nothing less, especially the leadership.”

Prof Nagel, who has been consulting Netanyahu alongside several other former security advisors, said high-ranking Hamas members such as Ismail Haniyeh and Saleh al-Arouri have likely gone into hiding.

He said: “They are hiding or under the ground in Gaza or other places in the world where they think they are safe. We should declare that they are not safe.

“I don’t care if they are in Beirut or Doha or London. They are going to get the death penalty today, tomorrow, next week or five years from now.

“We should do what the United States did to Bin Laden. What happened to us is something in between Pearl Harbour and 9/11. But the numbers [of deaths] are much bigger compared to our population.”

Hamas militants fired 3,000 rockets from Gaza and sent hundreds of gunman storming over the border into southern Israel in unforeseen assault on October 7.

They rampaged through towns on a merciless killing spree and took dozens of Israeli hostages back to Gaza, where 126 still remain. At least 1,300 Israelis were killed and as many as 3,400 wounded.

Israel declared war and retaliated with a week of punishing bombing raids. More than a million Palestinians are thought to have been displaced by bombing.

Israel’s strikes on the Gaza Strip have resulted in 2,329 Palestinian deaths, with over 9,714 wounded.

At least 53 people have been reported killed in the West Bank, with more than 1,100 wounded.

Gaza has been left without power, water or fuel and food is running dangerously low.

Israel’s military forces are now gearing up for “additional significant combat operations” in northern Gaza.

The warning forced more than a million civilians to desperately flee to southern Gaza ahead of the Middle East’s biggest military invasion since the 2003 Iraq War.

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IDF spokesman Jonathan Conricus claimed the forced evacuation was aimed at keeping civilians safe and preventing Hamas from using them as human shields.

Prof Nagel said: “It is not the time to look for someone to blame, we do not have time for this. But we were too naïve.

“Some people say revenge is better served cold. Not now. Not the revenge of a small child or a 90-year-old grandmother.”

Gaza, the occupied territory Israel acquired in 1967 has a population of two million.

Hamas won a surprise victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections and seized full control of Gaza in 2006.

The cycle of attack and retaliation between Israel and militant Palestinain groups is nothing new, but the latest hammering of the Gaza strip has resulted in some of the worst bloodshed in over half a century of conflict.

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