Hamas's Deadly Invasion Evaluated

An Israeli armored personnel carrier heads toward the Gaza border. Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated Press

"The dominant view in Israel, and not just at the political level, but also within some in the security services, was that the conflict in Gaza is manageable, that we could contain it."

"The easy answer that you hear is that Hamas is an apocalyptic terrorist movement that doesn't care about human life. That's true. But they're not irrational."

"Hamas has already said ... that it wants to exchange [the Israeli hostages] for prisoners. One objective for Hamas in doing that is to boost up its ranks by freeing prisoners [jailed in Israel] in large numbers."

Thomas Juneau, political scientist, University of Ottawa

"Hamas officials have been quite open about the fact that this [normalization] would be a huge event."

"Saudi Arabia is the custodian of the two holiest sites in Islam and I think Hamas fears that if there would be normalization with Saudi Arabia, other Muslim nations, other Arab nations would follow suit."

"Not only is it [Fatah] secular as opposed to Islamist but it believes in a two-state solution and Hamas does not."

"Hamas is not fighting for there to be a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Hamas is fighting to destroy Israel ... it's against peace in general."

Matthew Levitt, professor, Georgetown University Center for Security Studies

"I can give you a hypothesis and that is, we were in a situation where there was no peace process. There was absolutely no movement whatsoever on Palestinian issues. And I think that Hamas took the decision that they had to shuffle the deck, that they had to do something or they wanted to do something, which would make the status quo untenable."

"It's not at all clear to me how [Hamas] thought the endgame would work out. They would have known that this would have brought a major Israeli military operation, that that would include ground operations."The last Israeli ground operation [in 2014] was the biggest boost in history to Hamas's popularity."

"Clearly ... it wasn't meant to be an incremental thing. It was meant to be a game changing thing. And that includes the deliberate targeting of civilians."

"Are you going to occupy all of it? You're going to fight street by street into downtown Gaza?"

"If you destroy Hamas, who will you hand [Gaza] to when you leave? Do you want to occupy it?"

Rex Brynen, Middle East expert, McGill University

Rockets fired from Gaza City are intercepted by the Israeli Iron Dome defense missile system in the early hours of October 8, 2023. EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images

 

The Palestinian Authority, commented Dr. Juneau from his perspective as an academic with a focus on the Middle East, is highly incompetent and corrupt. That alone has led to resentment among Palestinians which has been responsible for growing support for radical groups like Hamas. October 7th's incursion by Hamas into Israel, he stated, represents "the most significant escalation of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict in several decades", he said, quoting the Council on Foreign Relations.

"We just don't have great insight into Hamas's strategic judgement", added political scientist Rex Brynen. October marks 50 years since the Yom Kippur War when a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria led a surprise attack on Israel, which may entirely be coincidental. Since Hamas stated the October 7 attack had been planned out carefully for a year before the event.

At the same time, Israeli public opinion and support for the current government led by Benjamin Netanyahu with the 2022 coalition government including hard-right religious factions, and the government's intention to change the judicial reform process that Israel's liberal-left supports, fracturing the country, and in the opinion of onlookers from outside the country, believing it to have been in a weakened state. Opportunity perhaps beckoned, all the more so when the dissenting opinions took place at all levels, including the IDF and its reservists, some of whom refused to serve.

 

 

The ongoing normalization process between Israel and Saudi Arabia was a red flag to Islamists and Palestinians in general, realizing it left them outside the loop; the reality being that the 'Palestinian refugee' problem was being sidelined in the greater interests of achieving regional peace that would lead to greater regional prosperity and in no small part greater security, in the majority Arab Sunni region where Shiite Islamist Republic of Iran presents as a threat.

 

An issue that Dr. Juneau expressed his  skepticism over. On the other hand, they all acknowledged, Fatah, the leading party in the Palestinian Authority and the PA itself are unpopular and viewed as weak by the  general Palestinian population they govern. Even among West Bank Palestinians Hamas is admired and supported to a far greater extent than the Palestinian Authority. Then there are relations between Fatah and Hamas; the latter despising the former as a secular group to Hamas's Islamism.

Dr. Brynen expressed his opinion that the 'success' of the Hamas attack surprised even Hamas. The much higher Israeli body count and hostage taking surpassed its expectations. And the corollary to that was a far greater response from Israel than Hamas might have anticipated.

One thing all three agreed upon in their debate was that whatever the original reasons behind the unprecedented scale of the attack -- whether to bring international attention to focus on the Palestinians; to eliminate Israel for replacement by an Islamist state; to free prisoners convicted of crimes in Israel; or to help Iran -- the ultimate goal was to effect a massive change in the region's dynamics. 

 

To that degree, and to the dimensions of the attention given its deadly exploits in the outside world, they succeeded.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather during a rally for Gaza outside the Israeli Consulate General in New York on Oct. 9. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images