A potential pivot point on Gaza — and also on Israel

TEL AVIV — It is human to assume things remain more or less the same. Then history intervenes with a game-changing event. So it was on Saturday, Oct. 7, when battalions of Hamas militants invaded Israel as it celebrated a Jewish holiday.

They managed to kill hundreds of civilians and drag many back others into Gaza as hostages, even as their colleagues rained rockets on Tel Aviv and other cities. It was an event so shocking as to change everything.

That’s because Israel, for all its history of bravado and occasional recklessness, is a prosperous country with largely Western expectations about the lifestyle and security of its citizens. Despite a history of terrorism and violence, its people are mostly ill-suited to be stoic about the scenes that unfolded here this weekend.

These included not only buildings lying in ruins and going up in flames but submachine-wielding terrorists running wild in Israeli villages and towns. They included a video of crying women marched by militants into Gaza through Israeli territory unimpeded. Abductees, including an elderly woman, were paraded inside Gaza. In a bone-chilling recording, a mother begged for help as she hid with her baby while attackers broke into her home.

There are at least 500 dead and 2,000 wounded, probably many more, the vast majority of them civilians. Relative to population, this is equivalent to four 9/11s in the United States. 

Just as those attacks by Al Qaeda launched a new chapter for the United States, so this attack ends Israel’s patience with the strategy it has pursued since Hamas expelled the Palestinian Authority from Gaza in 2007. That strategy was to accept Islamic militant rule in the neighboring strip, strictly control who and what goes in and comes out, and accept the occasional round of rocket fire. It was understood that the missiles can mostly be stopped by the Iron Dome system and are not likely to kill a lot of people — as indeed they have not.

Israel has never had the stomach for the losses it would likely absorb by launching a ground invasion aimed at physically dislodging Hamas. And even though it has cumulatively killed hundreds of civilians in its efforts to bomb Hamas into ending rocket fire during mini-wars in 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021 and 2022, it never flattened Gaza the way U.S. forces did in Iraq’s Mosul and Syria’s Raqqa to uproot the Islamic State.

But given the dimensions of Saturday’s disaster, it’s safe to say that the tanks would already be rolling into Gaza, if not for the hostages. If reports in Arab media claiming 52 civilians and soldiers are now inside the strip are true, this creates an explosive new reality. Almost anything could happen. Israel is in a state of rage, it has no good options, and there is a strong feeling that this cannot be allowed to stand.

One might ask why Hamas decided to roll the dice this way, since the group’s leaders must know that they are risking their continued control of Gaza and its 2 million long-suffering people. Logic dictates the group is hoping to expand the fighting into a major regional event — for example, by compelling Hezbollah to open up a northern front from Lebanon or by sparking a third Palestinian uprising in the West Bank, and even dragging Israel’s two million Arab citizens into the fray.

This would be a far different scenario than the one that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been hoping for: peace with Saudi Arabia that would expand Israel’s acceptance in the region and would require no real movement to ease the plight of the Palestinians. The Palestinians have a history of missing opportunities to gain an independent state, but they also have a way of confounding attempts to render them irrelevant.

It is also possible that Hamas was tempted to strike by the toxic internal divisions that have wracked Israel since the election of a far-right coalition 11 months ago. Netanyahu, who is on trial for bribery, heads a coalition brimming with fanatics and racists, whose poster boy is the National Security Minister, a thug who boasts multiple convictions, including for supporting terrorism.

This coalition, whose fluke victory resulted from foolish splits in the opposition, opened up two separate fronts with the confidence of a juggernaut with a strong public mandate. First, it has sought to expand Jewish settlements on occupied land and has given free rein to extremist settlers who occasionally terrorize the West Bank Palestinians.

Then came its effort to undermine Israeli democracy was widely mislabeled as a “judicial reform.” That plan — whose 225 proposed laws include one that would allow the coalition to ban opposition parties from running — has led Israeli reservists and pilots to threaten to ignore call-ups and gave impetus to the largest protest movement in the history of Israel.

This government, which in recent months has been plummeting in the polls, now finds itself presiding over a debacle reminiscent of the Yom Kippur War, in which Egypt and Syria attacked exactly 50 years and one day ago. Similar to then, Israel was caught flat-footed, even though Hamas, just like Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat back then, had long been telegraphing its intent.

There will be many questions directed at a coalition who seemed more interested in dismantling democracy than in setting up defenses around Gaza. How was there no intelligence by the vaunted Shin Bet? Why did the attackers succeed in cutting through the security fence and streaming into Israel, taking over entire communities for long hours? How could they have seized hostages and frog-marched them across miles of empty territory back into Gaza?

Could it be related to the fact that the military has far more soldiers stationed in the West Bank, to protect the settlers and subdue the restive Palestinians, than around Gaza?

Israel is too much of a garrison state, and too physically small for any of this to be even remotely reasonable. It is the kind of thing that brings down governments, and it may prove too much even for a survivor like Netanyahu. 

For now, the leadership of the opposition has offered the option of a “national unity government” for as long the emergency lasts. But long knives will surely be unsheathed soon enough.

Dan Perry is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press. The author of two books about Israel, he also chaired the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem.