LONDON, October 12. /TASS/. The Hamas leadership is provoking Israel into starting a ground operation in the Gaza Strip, which may result in a failure for Israeli authorities, Alex Younger, Former Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) said in an interview for BBC.

"HAMAS is essentially creating a trap for Israel, and will be well pleased, if Israel commits itself to an open-ended full-scale ground invasion of Gaza, because of the scale and intensity of the conflict that that would entail and the loss of innocent life that would inevitably follow, and the radicalization [of the standoff] that would engender," he said, adding that this would put Israel’s allies in an ‘impossible position,’ and this is what HAMAS wants.

"It is about reactions. Israel is going to have to do strikes into Gaza to demonstrate its intent to assuage the expectations of the Israeli people. But there is not, fundamentally, at the end of this, a military solution to this problem. You cannot kill all the terrorists without creating more terrorists. And military operations of this kind very, very rarely succeed outside of some kind of political strategy," Younger noted.

The situation in the Middle East has escalated abruptly after an armed infiltration of HAMAS militant from the Gaza Strip into Israel. The HAMAS movement considers this attack a response to the actions of Israeli authorities towards the Al Aqsa Mosque at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Israel announced a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip and started carrying out strikes at the enclave and at certain areas of Lebanon and Syria. Clashes also take place in the West Bank. Over 1,300 Palestinians were killed and over 6,200 were injured, with up to 1,500 Israelis killed and almost 4,000 injured.

Previously, Western media reported that the Israel Defense Forces may begin a large-scale ground offensive in Gaza.