THE NEW YORK TIMES The most comprehensive invasion of Israeli territory in decadesdriven by a force from the Hamas which was widely seen as a disorganized group of militants, caused such a psychological shock Israel that its very foundations are being called into question: its army, its intelligence services, its government and its ability to control the millions of Palestinians in its midst.
The war began with a Hamas attack that killed around 700 Israelis This is not an existential struggle for the survival of the Israeli state itself, as was the 1948 war triggered by the creation of Israel or the United States Yom Kippur War 1973. But 75 years, or half a century, after those conflicts, the sight of renewed kibbutz raids, hostagetaking and desperate killings of Palestinian civilians by Palestinian militants has awakened a kind of primal fear.
“The Israelis are shaken to their core,” said Yuval Shany, a professor of international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “There is outrage at Hamas, but also at the political and military leadership that allowed this to happen. One would expect such a strong state to avoid such things, but 75 years after the founding of Israel, the government has failed in its primary responsibility: protecting the lives of its citizens.”
Israeli soldiers leave their shelter in Sderot, southern Israel, after sirens warned of rocket fire from Gaza. Photo: Tamir Kalifa/NYT
Just like the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War Disbelief mixed with anger at a colossal failure of intelligence.
In 1973 it was assumed that after Israel’s lightning victory in the SixDay War in 1967, Syria and that Egypt her strength was exhausted. Today there is a growing belief that Hamas had no interest in largescale violence and that it could even be a useful tool for weakening the more moderate Palestinian Authority West Bankand thereby bury the discussion about a Palestinian state.
“The fact that we allowed the most extremist Palestinian elements to grow stronger was ignored, and Israel showed itself completely unprepared strategically and operationally,” said Shlomo Avineri, a political scientist in Jerusalem.
Regardless of the outcome of the war that had just begun, a page was turned. After all, Israel has not yet overcome the conflict that has dogged it since the founding of the modern state in 1948: the claims of two peoples, Jews and Palestinians, to the same narrow strip of land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan.
Its wealth, its vibrant early culture and its growing acceptance in middle East They failed to forever obscure Israel’s fundamental instability. Now the shock to its selfimage is so great that after the initial mobilization, Israel could end up in a period of profound social and political unrest.
There is certainly talk of a transformative normalization agreement between the Saudi Arabia and Israel, mediated by the American government, appears overly optimistic after the Hamas attack.
This coup against Israel comes at a time of deep domestic unrest. The dismay that the Israel Defense Forces, the respected institution at the heart of the country’s security, could allow such a multipronged Palestinian attack and then appear slow to respond was compounded by the widespread feeling that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he was completely distracted.
Gabriel Trigun, a resident of Sderot, lies next to his car as rockets fired from Gaza are intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system. Photo: Tamir Kalifa/NYT
His focus is on a controversial judicial reform that would weaken the independence of the judiciary and would therefore endanger the democratic separation of powers, appears to have given the situation in Gaza a lower priority.
Israeli protests against the government program were so large that the military had to deal with more than 10,000 reservists threatening to refuse to serve, creating a major distraction. There has been no such threat since the Hamas attack. Wild settler projects in the West Bank, supported by rightwing extremist government ministers, were also a distraction.
“The government was obsessed with a plan that had nothing to do with national security,” Shany said. “There is a clear connection between this and Israel’s dismal performance. This doesn’t look good for Netanyahu.”
The Yom Kippur War, an equally profound psychological shock to Israel, did not immediately upend national politics. But within four years, in 1977, the Labor government that had ruled Israel since its founding was defeated, a rightwing Likud government took power in a landslide, and Labor barely recovered in the nearly five decades that followed.
To be sure, Netanyahu’s rightwing government appears to be in a deep hole and faces agonizing decisions about how comprehensive Israel’s retaliation should be. Gaza, controlled by Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the United States, has long simmered in an overcrowded state of poverty and resentment under a 16year Israeli blockade.
For many years there was a growing perception in Israel that the Palestinian question had become an irrelevant issue and that a policy of tactical delay in the face of everexpanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank would ensure that a Palestinian state would not emerge.
The conflict has become a “situation,” a boring term that expresses an explosive status quo. Netanyahu has emerged as an advocate of a “screw it” approach that leaves the idea of two states on life support. Israel has normalized relations with several smaller Arab states. The Palestinian issue has virtually disappeared from the global agenda. There was talk of a new Middle East.
People try to seek shelter after an acoustic warning of bomb attacks in Jerusalem. Photo: Tamir Kalifa/NYT
However, none of this could hide the elephant in the room: growing Palestinian anger against humiliation and marginalization, which had already led to a rise in violence in the West Bank this year.
The status quo was never really like that. He fomented the bloodshed by institutionalizing the steady advance of Israeli control over the more than 2.6 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Israeli rule over the besieged Gaza Strip, where another 2.1 million Palestinians live.
“If there is a lesson to be learned from this,” said Diana Buttu, a Haifabased Palestinian lawyer, “it is not that this was a security failure. It was a failure of the world to deal with the conflict. Every day is violent. We woke up to violence. Let’s put violence against Palestinians to bed.”
PalestinianIsraelis, often referred to as Israeli Arabs, who make up more than 20% of Israel’s population, are surprised by what happened and worried about the future, she said, but there is also “a sense of pride, that the most besieged had managed to escape.”, mixed with unease and unease at Hamas’s brutality against civilians.
“We are divided,” said Reem Younis, a Palestinian businessman with a hightech neuroscience company in Nazareth. “And now we don’t know what to expect and we’re scared.”
In a recorded message, Muhammad Deif, the leader of Hamas’s military wing, described the aim of the “operation” as ensuring that “the enemy understands that the time for its irresponsible violence is over.” The statement was clearly aimed at shaking up Palestinians’ tolerance of powerlessness in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Rockets fired from Gaza are intercepted by Israeli air defenses on October 8. Photo: Tamir Kalifa/NYT
However, the costs can be very high for both sides. The operation showed the world that, as Avineri said, “every Israeli Jew is a legitimate target for Hamas to kill.” This will not help the broader Palestinian cause with Western governments.
Netanyahu promised a “long and difficult war” which is now entering an “offensive phase that will continue without restrictions or pauses until the goals are achieved”. More than 400 Palestinians have already been killed.
The temptation is strong for a devastating Israeli offensive to ensure that Hamas can never launch such an operation again. A model could be the massive offensive in the south in 2006 Lebanon; Since then, things have been quiet at the border, even though… Hezbollah fired artillery shells at three Israeli posts in the contested Shebaa Farms area on Sunday.
But in Gaza, the presence of more than 150 Israeli hostages held by Hamas is a hugely complicating factor.. Israel will not abandon its own hostages. The execution of hostages in response to an Israeli attack would become a sensitive domestic political issue. After a seemingly fatal mistake, Netanyahu faces one of his most thorny challenges.
“There will certainly be questions of international law that relate to proportionality and collateral damage,” Shany said of the upcoming Israeli offensive, citing legal restrictions on the use of military force. “But the political interest in containment is very limited. This will be a serious test for Israel.”
The longterm test has been clear for some time. It was summed up years ago by Danny Yatom, director of Mossad, Israel’s secret service, between 1996 and 1998: A single Israeli state between the sea and Jordan, encompassing the West Bank, “will degenerate into an apartheid state or a nonJewish state.” Yatom said. “If we continue to govern the territories, I see it as an existential threat.”
Netanyahu never wanted to listen to these warnings or seriously engage in peace talks between two states. The consequences of this policy could not be forever ignored when talking about a bright new Middle East.
Roger Cohen, currently bureau chief in Paris, has worked for The New York Times for 33 years: between 2009 and 2020 as an international correspondent, international editor and opinion columnist.