Israel At War: The Crisis The World Didn't See Coming

At 6:30 in the morning, local time, on October 7, 2023, the Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist group known as Hamas made an announcement: the start of Operation al-Aqsa Flood. Over 5,000 rockets were reportedly on their way to Israel at that very moment, with potential to wreak havoc all across the world’s only Jewish state. Minutes later, Israeli media reported the arrival of thousands of rockets on Israeli territory, and then the real attacks began.

In the following hours, Palestinian militants would stream into Israel by air, land, and sea, killing civilians, taking hostages, and razing the neighborhoods they attacked. Dozens of battles and skirmishes broke out across the Israeli landscape, as both Israeli and Palestinian civilians ran for cover. Given the sheer size and scale of Hamas’ attack, this was not just any other day in Palestine.

Pandora’s Box had just been blown apart, and depending on where this emerging war goes, it may well rewrite the balance of power across the entire Middle East.

Israel’s Defense Apparatus Sucker-Punched

The predominantly Jewish sovereign nation of Israel boasts a military capability that is among the best in the world. Protected by a combined active and reserve force of over six hundred thousand troops in the Israel Defense Force, better known as the IDF, watched over by an advanced missile-defense system known as the Iron Dome, guarded by the elite intelligence agency Mossad, and believed to be in possession of anywhere between seventy and several hundred nuclear warheads, Israel is a strategic juggernaut with the potential to punch way above its own weight. Locked into a perpetual, low-grade conflict with a wide range of organizations based in the Palestinian territories—dual stretches of land hosting an Arab, Muslim population that Israel has occupied for decades—Israel is always ready for war.

And when war has visited itself upon Israel in the past, that same small nation has proven itself consistently up for the task, beating back the combined forces of the Arab world on several occasions. So it was a surprise not just to the people of Israel, but to the entire world, when in the early-morning hours of October 7, 2023, Israel’s entire defense apparatus got sucker-punched. At 6:30 AM, Israeli time, a flood of over five thousand rockets was fired from one of the two territories Israel occupies.

Situated on the Mediterranean Sea, this stretch of land, called the Gaza Strip, is dominated by a political and military organization known as Hamas, with close to two and a half million Palestinians living under their authority. Within moments, Israeli radar was lit up with a barrage of thousands of incoming projectiles, leaving almost no time for the nation to spring into action. Israel’s Iron Dome is built to deal with exactly this threat.

It is a missile defense system meant to defend against short-range rockets, catching them in midair before they plow into their targets on the ground, and the reason that it exists is to deal with attacks just like this one. Hamas launching rockets into Israel is nothing new, and it is an issue that the Iron Dome has dealt with thousands of times. But it is not built to intercept thousands of missiles at once, and although it is unclear just how high a percentage of Hamas’ alleged 5,000 rockets were able to break through, the Iron Dome could not stop them all.

In the cities of Tel Aviv, Herzliya, Ashkelon, and elsewhere, numerous explosions were reported, and communities closer to the Gaza Strip withstood attacks of their own. But these rocket attacks were just the first wave.

Operation al-Aqsa Flood: The Multi-Front Assault

At the same time as Hamas’ rockets took to the air, the organization’s military commander in Gaza, Mohammed Deif, announced that Operation al-Aqsa Flood had commenced, and that the initial attack was only the first stage of what Hamas had planned. Deif issued a call to Palestinians not just in Gaza, but in the West Bank, the other stretch of territory that Israel occupies, as well as Palestinians living in Israel proper, and Muslims around the world: Take up arms, and attack Israel, together. As the rockets began to touch down and Deif’s statement hit the airwaves, Palestinian fighters opened fire on Israeli vessels off the coast of Gaza.

In Gaza’s eastern section, IDF soldiers were set upon in a Hamas attack. And striking outward into Israel came at least a thousand Palestinian fighters in a large-scale, coordinated assault that Israel was utterly unprepared for. Coming predominantly by land on pickup trucks and motorcycles, but also by air in paragliders and by sea in speedboats, Hamas breached Israel’s blockade of Gaza and marched on the surrounding communities.

Within a few hours, heavy fighting was underway at several Israeli military installations, with Palestinians able to capture several Israeli military vehicles over the course of their attack. The border town of Sderot was raided, while the town of Okafim and a kibbutz called Be’eri were both set upon by Hamas fighters. Caught off-guard, Israel urged its citizens to shelter in place, relying on bomb shelters and fortified sections of their homes that were built decades ago in case of such a crisis.

Not long after, Israel’s police chief reported that firefights were ongoing in at least twenty-one locations, with later announcements confirming that several communities had been completely overrun in the first few hours of hostilities. While all this was going on, Israelis and Palestinians alike took to social media to document what was happening around them. On the Israeli side, pictures and videos circulated of Hamas and other militants driving through city streets, trying to break into homes and shooting indiscriminately at any Israelis they saw.

At a music festival in the desert, thousands of young Israelis were forced to flee for their lives as terrorists on motorcycles massacred their fellow partiers, and in communities and towns across the affected areas, civilians were forced to watch, powerless, as their neighbors, friends, and even their family members were taken hostage and driven away, back in the direction of Gaza. Soldiers were taken captive too, and even the civilians who were able to avoid the crossfire were forced to wait hours upon hours before the IDF was able to reach them. Israeli media began to circulate phone recordings made by civilians trapped inside their homes, while photos emerged depicting the wholesale slaughter of civilians, including children and the elderly.

Casualties, Hostages, and the Retaliatory Strikes

On the Palestinian side, the first retaliatory attacks began to arrive via airstrikes on purported Hamas targets, while checkpoints and IDF bases were locked down. Tragedy struck on that side of the conflict, too; at least two hospitals in Gaza were bombed by Israeli fighter aircraft, claiming the lives of at least one nurse and one ambulance driver. Understanding the scope and scale of the resulting casualties is vital, but at the time of writing, that information remains incomplete.

Early estimates placed the dead at some three hundred Israelis, with nearly sixteen hundred injured and fifty-three captured; on the Palestinian side, 232 people were believed to be dead, with nearly eighteen hundred injured. But in all areas, these numbers are almost certainly a drastic undercount; IDF forces still struggled to reach some areas that had been overrun, while those trying to count the dead were still hard at work doing just that. Already, these numbers placed October 7, 2023, as one of the deadliest days for Jewish civilians in the nation’s history, but if the numbers swell as high as some experts believe, then the toll may reach thousands dead and tens of thousands wounded when all sides are combined.

And that, tragically, is just day one. By the evening hours of October 7, Israel’s longtime, on-again-off-again Prime Minister, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, was ready to make a statement. It was something that, by then, the world had been waiting for all day, knowing that whatever Netanyahu said would set expectations for what came next—and did it ever.

“Citizens of Israel, we are at war. Not an operation, not a round, at war. This morning Hamas initiated a murderous surprise attack against the state of Israel and its citizens.”

As Netanyahu described, Israel had set its priorities: first, clear the affected areas of Hamas terrorists; then, mobilize Israel’s substantial reserve forces in order to “fight back on a scale and intensity that the enemy has so far not experienced.” Said Netanyahu, referring to Hamas: “The enemy will pay an unprecedented price.” In follow-up statements, Netanyahu’s sentiments were echoed across the Israeli leadership, and the response was clear.

After the initial Hamas attack was dealt with, there would be no focus on de-escalation, and no time spent working toward reconciliation with the people of Palestine. Instead, the thing that came next would be retribution: swift, uncompromising, and utterly overwhelming.

The Yom Kippur War Parallel and Decades of Conflict

To understand the context behind Israel’s crisis, one must go back in time to a period of fifty years and one day, exactly, before Operation al-Aqsa Flood kicked off. That date, October 6, 1973, was the start of the Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War, or the October War. In this conflict, which lasted just under three weeks in total, a combined army of Egyptian and Syrian forces attacked the then-fledgling nation of Israel on two fronts.

Using the element of surprise, Egypt and Syria were initially able to devastate the outer Israeli countryside, before the IDF was able to respond. The conflict quickly grew into a Cold War, major-power standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union, but a much larger crisis was averted when Israel was able to rally and push back both the Egyptian and the Syrian advance. It was this brief war that led to an eventual normalization of relations between Egypt and Israel, the first time that Israel had been recognized as a legitimate state by an Arab nation.

It is no coincidence that this current attack by Hamas came just one day after the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, nor that it happened on the date of a Jewish holiday, as well as on the Jewish Sabbath day, Shabbat, which happens every Saturday. Although Hamas has not confirmed directly, it is widely understood that this timing for an attack was meant to both catch Israel off-guard in a state of lesser readiness, and to evoke the historical significance of the most recent instance of pan-Arab hostilities against the Israeli state. The Yom Kippur War, like this engagement, began with a surprise attack, and both leveraged the coinciding dates of significant Jewish holidays in order to cause broader devastation.

Hamas’ calls to arms have echoed across the Arab world, and though it is far too early to know all the geopolitical ramifications, it is not lost on anyone that not just Israel, but Egypt, Syria, and the broader Arab world are watching this unfold as they reflect on the old wounds of the Yom Kippur War, too. The sovereign nation of Israel and the two nominally Arab, Palestinian territories it occupies—the Gaza Strip and the West Bank of the Jordan River—have had an incredibly painful past. The local Palestinian population have protested violently on numerous occasions, in uprisings called intifada, against Israel’s strong military presence and civilian settlements on Palestinian territories.

It is a situation that has led many around the world to condemn Israel as an apartheid state, while many others condemn Palestinian occupied territories as havens for terrorist organizations—or even a budding terrorist state. It is an issue where any person who has an opinion at all probably has a very forceful one, and an issue where common ground is found about as often as rainstorms sweep across the sun-baked Gaza landscape. The current, growing conflict is not the first large-scale outbreak of hostilities in recent years.

In the summer of 2014, the abduction and death of three Jewish teenagers and a suspected revenge-killing of a Palestinian teenager set off a round of violence in which Hamas would fire almost three thousand rockets in Israel’s direction. Those attacks, and the resulting Israeli military push into Gaza, resulted in the deaths of 73 Israelis and 2,251 Palestinians. In 2018, a protest at the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip led to the deaths of 183 demonstrators, and parallel hostilities that saw over a hundred rocket launches into Israel, and some fifty Israeli strikes on Gaza.

In May of 2021, protests devolved into violence yet again, with Israeli bombardment killing hundreds more Palestinians and attacking non-military infrastructure from residential buildings to healthcare facilities, while sustaining the loss of thirteen Israeli lives.

Netanyahu’s Far-Right Coalition and the Al-Aqsa Flashpoint

This recent history of conflict has led many in the West to avoid letting their guard down around Israel and Palestine, instead fearing that a third intifada, a successor to the ones that have happened before, could break out in the near future. By definition, this would consist of an attack or large-scale retaliation by Palestinian forces, which would then continue into a long-term resistance movement. That description bears an eerie resemblance to the violence unfolding now.

In the two intifadas past, Palestine continued resistance for several years before eventually being pushed back, with the deaths of around 200 Israelis and around 2,000 Palestinians over the course of the first intifada, and the deaths of about one thousand Israelis and three thousand Palestinians over the course of the second. So even before the outbreak of this current conflict, international observers had long been concerned that a potential third intifada could be even worse. Tensions in Israel began bubbling toward an explosion in the waning days of 2022, when Netanyahu claimed his seat at the top of Israel’s Knesset for the third time in his career.

When he did, it was with the help of a coalition between Bibi’s own right-wing political party, Likud, a generally conservative party called Shas, a far-right, anti-Arab party called Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power, and several other parties that are either far-right, or represent ultra-Orthodox Jews. Taken together, Netanyahu’s coalition is the most far-right and the most overtly religious in Israel’s history, and they have a number of policies that the people of Palestine really aren’t into. Netanyahu had pledged to prioritize the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, as well as the development of new settlements, and his national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has been convicted of racist incitement against Arabs in years past.

Even before the establishment of Netanyahu’s coalition, 2022 had been especially deadly for Israel and Palestine, with repeated Palestinian attacks on Israeli military personnel, and Israeli operations in the West Bank, including almost-nightly raids on Palestinian targets in response. In 2023, things only got worse, with Israel’s raids becoming increasingly deadly, and resulting in skirmishes more and more often. On the other side of the conflict, Palestinian attacks against civilians left many Israelis dead despite their having little to no affiliation with their nation’s military actions.

Israel has long held Palestine’s governing bodies responsible for individual Palestinians’ attacks, even on occasions where the perpetrators are believed to have been lone wolves, and Palestinians similarly condemn Israeli military operators for the deaths of civilians caught in the crossfire, when those operations devolve into gun battles in refugee camps and thickly settled areas. So, too, do many Palestinians believe their own Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is complicit in Israeli operations, even as those operations increasingly involve the demolition of Palestinian homes to make room for Jewish settlers. For the Palestinian population, 36% of whom are estimated by the UN to live below the poverty line, this heightened strain and pressure within their territory has bred a violent animus, while in Israel, the rise of far-right populist nationalism has led to increased and more virulent polarization and a political interest in justifying continued conflict.

According to surveys done in early 2023, support for armed resistance in Palestine was as high as 68 percent, made worse by National Security Minister Ben Gvir’s recent insistence that Jews should be allowed to pray at, and visit at will, a mutually venerated holy site that is critical in both Jewish and Muslim understanding of the city of Jerusalem. Ask most Israelis, and it is known as the Temple Mount; ask most Palestinians, and it is Al-Aqsa Mosque. This is where the source of these new hostilities becomes exceptionally clear: the operation’s name itself, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

According to Hamas, the attack was set off by the events of the weeks immediately prior: specifically, the choice by a number of Israeli settlers to enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque and pray there. According to Hamas, as well as many unaffiliated religious leaders in Palestine, this constituted desecration of the mosque, even as, from the perspective of those settlers, it represented a proper fulfillment of religious obligation. For those who don’t have a horse in this Judaism-versus-Islam debate, this distinction matters to people on both sides of the conflict, to the point that bloodshed, in some people’s eyes, could be justified.

Also inflaming tensions had been a series of clashes along the fence that separates Israel and Gaza, for which the two sides very recently negotiated a truce. But at the same time, the scale and scope of Hamas’ attack must be acknowledged. This is not an impromptu effort to organize a retaliatory strike after an affront that happened just a few days ago; it is a coordinated, large-scale attack that was almost certainly planned over the course of months.

The Growing Hostage Crisis and Gaza Under Bombardment

In the aftermath of Hamas’ initial wave of attacks, the IDF confirmed that a number of civilians and soldiers had been captured after Hamas had breached the fence separating Israel and Gaza, a highly fortified and very expensive apparatus that had been expected to hold against an assault of this type. Social media videos were confirmed to show Hamas fighters dragging dead IDF soldiers on the ground in the aftermath of firefights that, those videos implied, Hamas had won, and other videos were verified to display Hamas fighters parading civilians through the streets of Gaza. In particularly shocking instances, children, elderly people, and disabled people are confirmed to have been among the hostages taken, while women were identified as having been stripped naked in some cases, bound, and displayed in trucks with Hamas fighters.

According to Hamas, initial estimates of some fifty-odd Israelis taken hostage are badly out of touch with reality, with Hamas itself claiming that the number of Israeli captives is “several times greater” than the dozens that Israel describes. In response to the growing hostage crisis, Bibi Netanyahu vowed revenge against anyone who harms Israeli captives, a sentiment that is certainly well-received in Israel, but one that doesn’t account for the true magnitude of the hostage crisis unfolding. With these hostages most likely scattered across Gaza, they are likely to be used as collateral or even human shields in the hostilities to come.

However, at least one Hamas spokesperson has indicated that the hostages might be intended for use in a prisoner swap, in order to secure the release of Palestinians detained by Israel. In Palestine, the situation is no better. Israel has now landed significant retaliatory strikes against targets in Gaza, with hundreds of Palestinians confirmed dead at a minimum, and that number expected to rise dramatically in the weeks to come.

A cumulative several hundred Israeli airstrikes have destroyed large residential buildings, including a 14-story tower that was home to dozens of families, and will likely need to be dug out in order to count the dead. Israel has warned residents of Gaza to seek shelter away from potential military targets, all but confirming that a massive response is incoming, and according to Israeli sources speaking to Western news outlets, a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip is a strong possibility. Hamas has reacted to the airstrikes with continued rocket attacks, which appear to be continuing to penetrate the Iron Dome at a significant volume, while the Iron Dome’s rate of interception remains unknown.

Elsewhere in Gaza, Israel has completely halted the flow of electricity, and has pledged to stop supplying fuel, food, and other supplies as well. On social media, actors from all sides of the conflict have already begun to disseminate misinformation; in just one example, a video circulated widely on the platform formerly known as Twitter, depicting airstrikes that had occurred in May of that year, but that were described as having just happened during the violence on October 7. Other videos showed footage that was contextualized in similarly misleading ways.

Both the Israeli government and Hamas took to social media to make their case to the world, and civilians distributed their own accounts of the day’s events as well. Information, misinformation, and outright disinformation began to saturate the online space, as did calls from Israelis desperately trying to find their loved ones, in hopes of figuring out who had simply gone missing, who had been captured, and who had been killed.

Palestinian Factions Rally Behind Hamas

As the conflict continued to evolve in its early stages, Hamas found itself backed up by multiple fellow Palestinian factions. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, a paramilitary organization active alongside Hamas in the Gaza Strip, pledged its support for the Hamas attacks in keeping with its broader goal, the military destruction of the Israeli state. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine also got in on the action, throwing the might of each group’s Marxist-Leninist militants behind the Hamas banner, and Palestine’s National Resistance Brigades showed their willingness to participate as well.

At the time of writing, the major Palestinian organizations of the West Bank have yet to take up arms, and moreover, there is little indication of just how many fighters Hamas might or might not have at their disposal. Certainly, the one-thousand-ish attackers who marched through Israel are not the only fighters Hamas has, but how substantial their military might is will demand time and probably violence in order to measure. At present, airlines that serve Tel Aviv and other Israeli airports are canceling flights, while citizens begin to move away from areas of Israel and Palestine alike that many fear may turn into warzones in the coming weeks.

At the same time, Israel has begun to circle the wagons, taking up defensive positions and preparing to deal with the potential for an invasion by one or more of its many Arab neighbors. The most significant threat comes from Lebanon, where the Islamist movement Hezbollah has its own long history of firing missiles into the northern reaches of Israel, and where renewed attacks or even a ground invasion by Hezbollah militants are now entirely within the realm of possibility. Hezbollah has congratulated Hamas on its attack, and added that they believe that “the will of the Palestinian people and the rifle of the resistance is the only alternative to face occupation.”

In the early hours of October 8, Hezbollah officials claimed responsibility for attacking two radar sites within Israel as well as three Israeli settlements, although whether this will ultimately be an isolated incident, or set off a fresh round of hostilities, remains to be seen. An all-but-inevitable retaliation eventually going down in Gaza raises the possibility that other nations could hop into the conflict in defense of Palestine, potentially even prompting direct involvement from the nation of Iran. In fact, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, the head of Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force has met with Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Islamic Jihad recently, with a non-zero possibility that these attacks by Hamas are the direct result of those talks.

A Catastrophic Intelligence Failure and the Iron Dome’s Limits

When trying to estimate the fallout from Hamas’ attack, one key point must be emphasized above all else: Regardless of what happens next, Hamas has already won. For an organization that relies on terrorism and indiscriminate attacks on civilians to disrupt the sense of normalcy or safety that ordinary Israelis feel at home, there has been no greater coup in their history than to pull off what they did on October 7. To provide incontrovertible proof that Hamas and Palestinians can threaten not just the occasional rocket attack, but large-scale, mass-casualty assaults on the Israeli state itself, is, from their standpoint, an accomplishment that will rewrite the balance of power between Israel and Palestine.

For a group operating from Hamas’ position, the simple act of engaging Israel in conflict is already a major victory on its own—and that has been done. It can never be taken back. Then, there is the Israeli side of the equation, a military-industrial powerhouse that is now forced to acknowledge that it was not nearly as prepared for this attack as it had initially believed.

The Iron Dome, a missile-defense system that was revered across the world for its effectiveness, has now, quite clearly, been pushed past its breaking point. The Iron Dome appears to be functioning normally, but like all missile-defense systems, it can only deal with so many threats at once. The number of incoming rockets it intercepted is not yet public knowledge, but it was less than the five thousand that Hamas launched across the border.

And so, too, does this attack represent a catastrophic failure of another Israeli strategy, known colloquially as “mowing the grass.” Under this strategy, Israel has long viewed Palestinian resistance as a war of attrition, in which intermittent crackdowns and raids are enough to deter Hamas from launching full-scale assaults, likened to the way that trimming grass on a lawn prevents it from becoming overgrown. But Hamas’ attack flies directly in the face of that doctrine, disproving its effectiveness in the span of just a couple of hours.

Worst of all is the question on the global intelligence world’s collective mind: How did Israel miss this? The buildup of over a thousand fighters, over five thousand rockets, and all the logistical infrastructure required for an operation of this size, simply cannot exist without leaving a trail. In a zone so thoroughly surveilled by Israel’s Mossad intelligence network, widely regarded as one of the most elite spy agencies in the world, there are only two possibilities: either Mossad learned about this attack in advance and didn’t notify the Israeli public, or they somehow completely missed the signs until it was too late.

Considering the complete military unpreparedness of Israel in this case, it seems more likely than not that this constitutes a complete intelligence failure—and the former chief of Mossad has even taken the extraordinary step of claiming that the organization, indeed, had zero advance knowledge of an attack. Said Efraim Halevy, “We had no warning of any kind, and it was a total surprise that the war broke out this morning.” The United States, which works closely with Israeli intelligence, has confirmed that it had no idea that the Hamas attack was coming.

Said former CIA employee Marc Polymeropoulos, “This is Israel’s 9/11. Not since 1973 has there been such a catastrophic intelligence failure in Israel. It is almost inconceivable how they missed this.”

Normalization at Risk and the Geopolitical Fallout

Just as important as the military-intelligence aspect is the political implication that Hamas chose this particular moment to attack for a reason—and probably not one that is so simply explained as just happening to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. It is no secret on the global stage that Israel’s current, far-right ruling coalition is walking a tightrope, trying to ram deeply unpopular reforms through the Knesset and alienating large swathes of the Israeli population. In the months preceding Hamas’ invasion, hundreds of IDF reservists declined to participate in training sessions or pledged not to report for duty, in protest to the Netanyahu coalition’s ongoing efforts to hobble the Israeli Supreme Court.

In fact, Netanyahu’s reputation and his ability to cling to power are more in doubt than ever, with a real possibility that even without this invasion, his coalition may have collapsed sooner than later. It is in this moment of perceived weakness within the Israeli state that Hamas chose to strike, and if their calculations are correct, then Israel’s internal divisions may not yet be finished playing out. Internationally, the attack has been met with a mixture of shock and dismay by Israel’s key allies, many of whom appear stunned that such a breach of Israel’s border with Gaza was even possible in the first place.

In the United States, President Joe Biden has condemned the attack and offered support to Israel, while the Department of Defense has offered its support in ensuring that Israelis are shielded from harm. United Nations officials have stressed the risk of further escalation, and emphasized the danger to civilians. Germany, France, Canada, and the United Kingdom have thrown their support behind Israel, while most of Israel’s neighbors in the Arab world have called for restraint and intense focus toward immediate de-escalation.

Iran, for its part, has thrown its support behind Hamas, while state TV made sure to circulate footage of Iranian parliamentarians chanting “Death to Israel.” But outside of the official statements made by each nation, the overwhelming consensus among both public servants and non-government analysts is one of astonishment at what happened. Nobody saw this coming—continued escalation in general, sure, but not a full-scale assault.

Not right then. On the world stage, it is impossible to understand this issue without understanding normalization—or, that is, an ongoing effort to establish peaceful relations between Israel and each member nation of the Arab world. In the last few years, Israel has normalized relations with Sudan, Bahrain, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates, but there is a far bigger prize just starting to come within Israel’s grasp: a normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia.

Along with Iran, Saudi Arabia is one of the Middle East’s biggest power players, and while the normalization process has certainly been complicated, it has been on track for months. For Hamas, and for all of Palestine, that is largely seen as bad news; after all, normalizing relations with Israel would be tantamount to Saudi Arabia endorsing Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank—thus turning its back on the people of Palestine in totality. Hamas has not been shy about the connection; speaking to Al Jazeera, the organization spokesman Ibrahim Hamad stated that Hamas’ attack on Israel is “absolutely a message” for Muslim countries who wish to normalize their diplomatic relationships with the country.

Hezbollah has voiced its own agreement with that statement, urging Arab nations to reconsider viewing Israel as a potential ally. In both cases, the subtext is clear: Palestinians, fellow Arabs, fellow Muslims, are making their great push against Israel. Are those other nations for Palestine?

Or against it? There is a real chance that Saudi Arabia, now faced with that key question, might turn its back on the normalization process, and if that happens, then all of Israel’s normalization efforts of the last few years could come toppling down. What that means, either for Israel’s diplomatic and geopolitical isolation or even for the possibility that major Arab powers might send material support to Hamas, remains to be seen.

Hamas chose this fight, and it chose to fight now, with a full awareness of just how difficult such a conflict will be. Regardless of the perceived winners and losers of each of Israel and Palestine’s most recent flare-ups, history shows that violence between the Israeli state and the Palestinian resistance almost always concludes with a far greater loss of life on the Palestinian side. To accept those odds, and provoke Israel with a brazen attack of this magnitude, inherently suggests that Hamas understands that this will be a difficult battle—or perhaps even a long war.

Like any other military on Earth, Hamas would not choose this fight if Hamas didn’t think it could win, and like any other military on Earth, if Hamas thinks it can win, then it is going to give everything it has got, understanding that Israel will respond in kind.

Frequently Asked Questions

How did Hamas breach Israel’s defenses on October 7, 2023?

Hamas launched over 5,000 rockets simultaneously to overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome, then sent at least a thousand fighters into Israel by three routes: overland on pickup trucks and motorcycles, by air in paragliders, and by sea in speedboats. The multi-vector assault breached the heavily fortified Gaza-Israel border fence, which had been expected to hold against exactly this kind of attack.

Why did Israel’s intelligence community fail to detect the attack in advance?

Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy stated the agency had “zero advance knowledge” of the attack, calling it a total surprise. Former CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos described it as Israel’s worst intelligence failure since 1973. The buildup of over a thousand fighters and five thousand rockets should have left a traceable footprint, making the complete miss a catastrophic failure of the Mossad’s surveillance network.

Why did Hamas time the attack for October 7, 2023?

The date fell one day after the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, in which Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel on a Jewish holiday. Hamas’s timing was widely understood as deliberate: it echoed that historical assault, caught Israel in a state of lesser readiness on the Jewish Sabbath, and sent a message to Arab nations considering normalization with Israel.

What is the “mowing the grass” strategy and how did Hamas undermine it?

Under this Israeli strategy, intermittent crackdowns and raids were meant to keep Palestinian resistance suppressed, likened to trimming a lawn before it overgrows. Hamas’s October 7 assault directly disproved the strategy’s effectiveness by demonstrating that Hamas could plan and execute a large-scale, mass-casualty operation despite years of such crackdowns, exposing a fundamental flaw in the doctrine.

How did Hamas’s attack threaten Israeli-Saudi normalization?

Before October 7, Israel and Saudi Arabia had been in an advanced normalization process that many in Palestine viewed as Saudi Arabia endorsing Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas spokesman Ibrahim Hamad explicitly described the attack as “a message” for Muslim countries considering normalizing relations with Israel, and Hezbollah echoed that warning, raising real doubt about whether Riyadh would continue the process.

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21. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/mow-lawn-israel%E2%80%99s-strategy-perpetual-war-palestinians-185775
22. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/10/07/statement-from-president-joe-biden-condemning-terrorist-attacks-in-israel/
23. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/07/world/middleeast/saudi-israel-gaza-war.html
24. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-gaza-hamas-rocket-attack-palestine-live-b2425733.html
25. https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-gaza-rockets-attack-palestinians/card/hezbollah-praises-hamas-attack-warns-against-normalising-ties-with-israel-rbqLpR9QDzCyiUGQw0xl
26. https://fortune.com/2023/10/07/attacks-on-israel-suggest-shocking-failure-of-intelligence-agencies/
27. https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4243880-esper-predicts-israel-intelligence-failure-will-have-ripple-effect/
28. https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-hamas-rockets-airstrikes-tel-aviv-11fb98655c256d54ecb5329284fc37d2
29. https://fortune.com/2023/10/07/surprise-attack-on-israel-threatens-repercussions-beyond-middle-east/
30. https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/surprise-palestinian-attack-spawns-fears-wider-mideast-war
31. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/live-updates-hamas-israel-gaza-attack-rockets-gunmen-palestinian-rcna119316
32. https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/al-aqsa-storm-militants-infiltrate-israel-after-gaza-rockets-10-07-intl-hnk/index.html
33. https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-gaza-attack-10-08-23/index.html
34. https://www.vox.com/2023/10/7/23907323/israel-war-hamas-attack-explained-southern-israel-gaza
35. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/middle-east-leaders-praise-and-condemn-hamas-attacks-against-israel/
36. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/07/hamas-launches-surprise-attack-on-israel-as-palestinian-gunmen-reported-in-south
37. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israeli-army-declares-state-of-readiness-for-war-hits-targets-in-gaza/3009882
38. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/7/sirens-warn-of-rockets-launched-towards-israel-from-gaza-news-reports
39. https://www.nrk.no/urix/hamas-til-nrk_-__hovedmalet-er-a-fa-palestinske-fanger-loslatt-1.16586790
40. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/10/07/world/politics/israel-gaza-hamas-strikes/
41. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-attack-hamas-unprecedented-rocket-invasion/
42. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-says-palestinian-militants-are-infiltrating-gaza-rcna119315
43. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/07/israel-gaza-timeline-videos-maps/
44. https://apnews.com/live/israel-hamas-war-live-updates
45. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/07/world/israel-gaza-attack
46. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/10/7/israel-palestine-escalation-live-news-barrage-of-rockets-fired-from-gaza
47. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/10/8/israel-palestine-escalation-live-israeli-forces-bombard-gaza
48. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/sirens-warning-incoming-rockets-sound-around-gaza-near-tel-aviv-2023-10-07/