Hamas will likely back away from its willingness for a five-year cease-fire with Israel which means that Israel’s long-planned incursion into Rafah will start early this week, retired Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, the president of Project Sentinel, told Newsmax on Sunday.

“I don’t think the Israelis have much other choice than to continue to plan for Rafah,” Shaffer, appearing with former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker on Newsmax’s “Sunday Report,” commented. “When Hamas comes back Monday, they’re going to say ‘Oh, we don’t want to do it,’ and I think it’s going to be the final indicator for the Israelis to go ahead and move forward.”

As a result, Shaffer said he forecasts that “you’re going to see the ground operations commence probably no later than Tuesday this coming week going into Rafah.”

Senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya, the Deputy Chair of Hamas in Gaza, recently stated in a recent interview that the group is willing to agree to a five-year cease-fire in exchange for a “fully sovereign” Palestinian state in the 1967 borders and the return of Palestinian refugees.

Volker agreed that Hamas would not want the cease-fire.

“Hamas wants to keep the hostages because they feel that that is their best guarantee against Israel doing exactly what Col. Shaffer said,” he said. “Israel does need to take out the remainder of Hamas. They do need to close down the tunnels. They do need to separate the civilians from Hamas and militants and they’re going to do that, and Hamas is intending to hold these hostages to try to stave that off as much as possible.”

Shaffer, meanwhile, said he believes the information is designed to put pressure on the Israelis, but they will “shrug it off.”

“I think there’s too much at stake here to stop with half-measures,” he said. “They have to go all the way. I’m a fan of movies, and there’s a saying in ‘Apocalypse Now’: don’t get off the boat unless you’re going to go all the way. They’ve got to go all the way.”

Meanwhile, the United States is working on the construction of this temporary pier on Gaza’s coastline to speed up humanitarian aid into Gaza, but “Hamas terrorists are firing mortars from refugee camps for this very pier we’re building,” said Shaffer. “The same distribution problems will come from what happens once that material reaches the beach and goes into the interior. We can’t control it… it’s a very dangerous situation. It’s, to me, a lose-lose situation.”

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