The biggest surprise about Hamas’ massive attack on Israel this morning is that it was a surprise. The operation was of unprecedented scale, involving thousands of personnel and equipment, from hang gliders to bulldozers and rockets. Such an effort requires weeks, if not months, of preparation, and all of this took place under the nose of an Israeli intelligence agency that has a deserved reputation as one of the most effective in the world.
How that happened is a matter of great shame within the Israeli security community and will prompt a painful internal investigation. Israel lost control of military outposts, armored vehicles and settlements, and the conflict is far from over. Dozens of Israeli civilians were killed, others were taken hostage and hundreds were injured.
Yet Saturday’s attack was also an important reminder of Hamas. It’s a US-designated terrorist group, but not a gang of hotheads. It is a well-equipped organization with a paramilitary force that is as calculating as it is ruthless. That is what has kept the country in control of Gaza since 2007, despite being under constant threat from Israel, as well as from even more radical Salafist and other Islamist groups in Gaza.
Only Hamas knows the details of its strategy for Saturday’s attack, but the potential consequences are clearly visible. A war in Gaza threatens to instantly change the direction of travel in the Middle East. It puts Israel in the treacherous position of having to choose between appearing weak – a dangerous strategy in the region – and inflicting the kind of mass casualties in the crowded Gaza Strip that will enrage Israel’s entire Palestinian population, forcing tough decisions imposed on the Arab leaders in the Gaza Strip. Golf and beyond. On Saturday there were already reports of 160 Palestinian deaths and more than 1,000 injuries in Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes.
Israel has managed to normalize relations with parts of the Arab world while supporting the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and, at best, slow prospects for a Palestinian state. Since 2020, Israel has signed US-brokered recognition agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. Saudi Arabia, home to Mecca, is considering a deal. Even Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who for years had positioned himself as a champion of the Palestinian cause for domestic political gain, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the first time last month.
Saturday’s calls for de-escalation from Erdogan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others came quickly and were undoubtedly sincere. They all know the political pressure they will face to condemn and sever ties with Israel if the number of Palestinian victims increases. That now seems inevitable. Netanyahu said his country was at war, while Major General Ghasan Alyan said Hamas had “opened the gates of hell to the Gaza Strip,” in an on-camera clip posted to the Israeli army’s feed on X (formerly Twitter ).
Alyan went on to say that Hamas will bear responsibility for the consequences, but however true that may be – and it is – the question of who fired first on Saturday will have little significance in the Muslim world. There, popular outrage over Israeli actions in recent months and years, particularly around the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, had increased. Alyan’s words will have less resonance than those of Mohammed Deif, a Hamas military commander, who said that ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ was launched because ‘enough is enough’.
The Saudi government’s statement calling for calm on Saturday already tried to position Hamas’ actions as retaliatory measures, recalling the kingdom’s “repeated warnings of the dangers of the explosion of the situation, as a result of the continued occupation, the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights, and the recurrence of systematic provocations against its sanctities.”
Hamas, which has never recognized Israel’s right to exist, must have predicted all this and taken it into account in its decision to attack. I say this not because I have Deif’s mobile number, but because I have encountered the calculating nature of the group. In 2011, I went to report in Gaza, unwittingly flying in from Israel on the morning the US had killed Osama bin Laden. Later that day, a Hamas official approached to offer a six-man security detail or escort to the border, as they had picked up Salafists “looking for the American journalist” so they could make a video. I had a friend check connections with Fatah’s intelligence services, and they confirmed the Hamas arrests, so I left Gaza.
I’m repeating this only because it was clear even to the security official sitting at the table with me that Hamas had no sympathy for American journalists, nor had any moral problems with organizing an exemplary retaliation for bin Laden’s death. Yet it was May 2011. Hamas was then conducting reconciliation talks with Fatah, under international supervision, and the group did not want the kind of attention a video would attract.
Now they have a tactical interest in that kind of attention. Events have not gone Hamas’s way in recent years, and a Saudi-Israeli normalization would have been a major defeat. Hamas’s aggression will widen its base of support, and the horrific videos of Israeli victims it staged on Saturday will help with recruitment. Responding to Hamas while keeping Israeli-Arab normalization on track will be extremely difficult for Netanyahu to pull off, and even more so the longer the fighting continues.
(Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe, Russia and the Middle East.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
