Israel at war: An explainer
A menorah made out of Hamas rockets in the kibbutz of Zikim, which was impacted by the terrorist attacks. Source: Unsplash
hamas’ attack on israel has changed the calculus for geopolitics in the middle east. by dave sharma.
This piece was first published on Global Insights.
Israel under attack
Israel suffered its worst ever terrorist attack and worst loss of life in a single day when Hamas terrorists from Gaza entered Israel on Saturday 7 October.
Some 1,300 Israeli civilians were killed in the attacks, in a brutal and barbaric fashion, including very young children, parents, women and the elderly. The worst killings took place at the Supernova music festival near the border with Gaza and towns in the south of Israel, including Sderot, Kfar Azar and Be’eri.
Hamas operatives conducted attacks as far as 25km inside Israel, and besieged several communities for over 24 hours before the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) could re-establish security. The IDF’s Gaza Division headquarters at Re’im and the police station at Sderot were both overrun and occupied by Hamas.
Hamas also abducted a large number of civilians, somewhere around 190, kidnapping them back to Gaza and parading the captives through the streets.
Major General Itai Veruv, an Israeli commander on the scene soon after the attacks, described it thus: “It’s not a war or a battlefield; it’s a massacre. It’s something I never saw in my life, something more like a pogrom from our grandparents’ time.”
In its scale, surprise, and the deep shock rendered to the nation’s sense of security, the October 7 attacks on Israel are on par with the 9-11 attacks on the United States. The attacks also brought back painful memories of the Holocaust. As Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said: “Not since the Holocaust have so many Jews been killed on one day.”
Hamas fired a large barrage of 2,200 rockets at Israel at around 6:30am on Saturday before entering Israel through the border fence, by paraglider, and by boat. Prior to overrunning the border, Hamas used drones to destroy or disable surveillance towers and weapons systems on the border.
Intelligence, operational and strategy failure
The event was a clear intelligence and operational failure for Israel. Israel did not expect Hamas to attack, believing it would not wish to invite another war with Israel, and was stunned by the new capabilities Hamas had developed and its ability to develop and execute a complicated operational plan, which required significant training.
A similar complacency to that which led to Israel’s previous worst intelligence failure, the failure to anticipate the Yom Kippur war, seems to have been at work.
Operationally, Hamas was able to relatively easily penetrate Israel’s border defences and overrun security posts. The IDF was slow to detect the incursion and mount an operational response, which meant many Israeli civilian communities were left to the mercy of Hamas terrorists for several hours.
The attacks were a clear failure of Israel’s security measures and, in the humiliation they have delivered to the vaunted IDF, have undermined Israel’s regional deterrence significantly.
Israel’s military response will now aim to re-establish that deterrence.
As a strategic concept, Israel’s containment of Hamas also failed. Israel has now fought four wars against Hamas in Gaza since Hamas ousted the Palestinian Authority there in 2007. Israel has been prepared each time to leave Hamas in control of Gaza, on the assumption that Hamas’ capability to damage Israel was limited, that Hamas would be deterred by Israel’s capabilities, and by an unwillingness to pay the military and diplomatic price needed to destroy Hamas.
That calculation has now clearly changed. Israel will need to destroy Hamas militarily, capture or kill its senior commanders, vanquish its political role in Gaza, and then create and establish a new political and security authority in Gaza that is more acceptable.
The military element of that task is straightforward in an operational sense, though it will likely extract a high price on Gaza’s civilian population, generate significant international criticism and condemnation, and result in many Israeli combat deaths.
The political element of that task will be more complicated, and will likely need to involve the re-establishment of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and a significant security presence provided by outside actors, perhaps Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Egypt.
Israel prepares to invade Gaza
Israel has been attacking targets from the air inside Gaza over past days, and is now preparing to mount a military operation inside Gaza, which would be its first ground incursion into Gaza since 2014.
Israel has called up 360,000 troops, mounted armour and tanks on Gaza’s borders, and has issued a directive to Gaza’s civilian population to move to the south of Gaza (a directive that Hamas has instructed civilians not to obey).
It is likely that Israel will begin moving into Gaza within days, and will probably seek to establish a military cordon across the middle of Gaza, from the border to the coast, before moving in to the north of Gaza to locate and destroy Hamas military infrastructure.
The presence of Hamas-held Israeli hostages inside Gaza will complicate operations considerably, and pose some excruciating military dilemmas. Hostages have high political currency in Israel, but Hamas will use them as human shields, and locating and rescuing them will be incredibly difficult, and may prove impossible.
Regional risks
Hamas has ties to Iran, which have been growing closer in recent years, and with Hezbollah, an Iranian-funded and armed terrorist group which is embedded in Lebanon and sits on Israel’s northern border. This notwithstanding that Hamas is a Sunni Islamist movement, whereas Iran and Hezbollah are Shia Islam. Hezbollah and Iran both lauded Hamas’s attack on Israel.
Qatar and, to a lesser degree, Turkey have historically provided financial and a degree of diplomatic support to Hamas. Qatar hosts Hamas’s political leadership. Egypt, which controls one entry point to Gaza (at the Rafah crossing), has a history of enmity towards Hamas, as Hamas is an offshoot of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood movement in Egypt.
Since the Hamas attacks, Hezbollah has launched rocket and artillery attacks from Lebanon on Israeli positions. Other groups, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the West Bank, might also seek to stoke the fires and exploit the situation Israel finds itself in.
To date, whilst unrest in the West Bank has grown, and Hezbollah has stepped up its activity, there have been no major incidents. But once Israel’s full-scale incursion into Gaza gets underway, tensions will rise markedly and there is a risk of further fronts of conflict opening.
The biggest regional risk would be open confrontation between Israel and Iran. The two nations have fought a shadow conflict for over a decade, but within containable and well-defined limits. This could change as a result of two factors.
First, if it can be proven that Iran not only supported the Hamas operation, but was actively involved in its planning and execution, then Israel would almost certainly be compelled to respond in kind, to ‘level the ledger’ in the language of the Middle East.
Second, if Israel looks to be on the brink of destroying Hamas entirely, and Iran decides it cannot accept this, then Iran may seek to activate Hezbollah and open a second front on Israel’s northern border.
Iran apparently sent a message to Israel via the UN Middle East Special Envoy over the past weekend, warning Israel that it would intervene if Israel’s operation against Gaza continues.
Saudi-Israel normalisation talks derailed
Rapprochement talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which have been underway for several months and might have been on track to be finalised by early 2024, will almost certainly be an early casualty of this war.
As this conflict and its human tragedy play out on television and phone screens in coming weeks, Arab public opinion will become too inflamed for the Saudis to have the diplomatic space to extend any olive branch to Israel. And Israel will be in no mood to make the concessions to the Palestinians necessary to get Saudi Arabia on board.
Indeed, this may have been the main intent behind the attacks, probably with Iranian prompting or encouragement: to stop a regional bloc from forming that would put the Palestinian issue on the back burner, bring together a balancing coalition against Iran, and provide Saudi Arabia access to a nuclear enrichment capability and a US security guarantee. In that sense, the Hamas operation has been a strategic success.
The Abraham Accords, the U.S.-brokered agreements that opened diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and normalised ties with Morocco in recent years, will also come under serious strain once a full offensive in Gaza gets underway.
Watch Dave Sharma as he explains the game changing nature of the Abraham Accords. Brokered during the Trump Administration, these agreements are likely to come under serious strain in light of current events.
Global response
Most nations came out strongly to condemn the Hamas terrorist attacks and assert Israel’s right to defend itself, with the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France and Germany all resolute and unequivocal in their language.
This position will likely become harder to sustain once Israel’s offensive begins and public opinion begins to turn, as it inevitably will, to the civilian casualties that will result from this operation. Israel will know its diplomatic window for this coming operation is limited.
The United States has sent two aircraft carrier battle groups to the eastern Mediterranean in an attempt to deter other adversaries of Israel from exploiting the situation, and to prevent the conflict from spilling over.
The US Secretaries of State and Defense both visited Israel over the past weekend, and this was followed by US President Biden on Wednesday. Biden’s message was one of strong solidarity and reassurance in public, with some messages of caution delivered privately, in particular to ensure humanitarian assistance reaches Gaza, and that Israel seeks to minimise civilian casualties.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also visited Israel on Thursday, delivering similar messages.
British and US citizens are amongst those being held hostage by Hamas.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken conducted a regional tour, encouraging neighbouring countries to restrain their own populations and actors and discussing with Egypt the possibility of opening a civilian and humanitarian corridor to Gaza (Egypt shares a border with Gaza).
Western nations are also on heightened alert for the risk of domestic terrorist attacks as a result of the conflict inflaming sentiments amongst pro-Palestinian public elements.
Implications for Ukraine
Ukraine’s war effort is likely to suffer as a result of the attack on Israel, one reason Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was so quick out of the blocks in condemning the attack. (He is reportedly seeking to visit Israel shortly.)
International attention will be distracted, whilst Israel — which keeps limited stocks of munitions and the like — is likely to place new pressure on the already-depleted western arsenal. The United States is already shipping military equipment to Israel in response to Israel’s requests.
For Putin, the distraction is welcome, and one he will seek to exploit whilst international focus is elsewhere.
Dave Sharma is a former Federal Liberal MP and a former ambassador to Israel.