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HomeRead, Watch, ListenIsrael
AnalysisIsrael

Israel at War: Best of the analysis

TJI Wrap
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Published: 9 October 2023

Last updated: 5 March 2024

The October 7 attacks will have implications not only for Israel and Gaza but for the West Bank, the Lebanese border, Iran and even Ukraine.

For years Netanyahu propped up Hamas, now it's blown up in our faces

Tal Schneider, Times of Israel

For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group. The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organisation with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.

Hamas was also included in discussions about increasing the number of work permits Israel granted to Gazan labourers, which kept money flowing into Gaza, meaning food for families and the ability to purchase basic products. Israeli officials said these permits, which allow Gazan labourers to earn higher salaries than they would in the enclave, were a powerful tool to help preserve calm.

Additionally, since 2014, Netanyahu-led governments have practically turned a blind eye to the incendiary balloons and rocket fire from Gaza.

Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the Finance Minister in the hard-line government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.

One thing is clear: The concept of indirectly strengthening Hamas — while tolerating sporadic attacks and minor military operations every few years — went up in smoke on Saturday.

Four bad options face Israel in the Gaza Strip

Amos Harel, Haaretz

 Beyond the shock that the attack evoked, and the failures of Military Intelligence and the army’s readiness, Israel is left with a hard nut to crack. Its leaders have a few options: urgent negotiations on a prisoner exchange agreement, in which Hamas will demand an astronomical price in the form of the release from Israeli prisons of Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis, thereby scoring another tremendous morale boost; a crushing aerial campaign against Hamas targets in the Strip, in which thousands of Palestinian civilians will also be killed or injured; a tightening of the blockade on the Strip and damaging of its infrastructure that could cause a humanitarian disaster and an international debacle; or an extensive ground operation that will result in multiple losses on both sides and may eventually fail.

A massive aerial strike of the Strip began at around 3pm Sunday, but its long-term objectives aren’t clear. None of the options looks good, but this is the nature of harsh dilemmas, and this is how true leadership is tested.

Questions have been raised about an attack risking the lives of the hostages: How do you weigh the lives of a small number of people who may be harmed in captivity, perhaps deliberately by their abductors, and the danger to the many more lives if the organisation is allowed to continue unhindered? To what extent can the regular army, which has not experienced such numbers of casualties in 50 years, withstand such a difficult test over time and sustain ground manoeuvres inside the Gaza Strip?

Israel's four-fold blunder

Nahum Barnea, Ynet

The Israel Defence Forces are asking the public to not address the blunders. The Chief of Staff and the generals should be left to focus on fighting, they say. The investigations will come later. "Shut up and shoot," wrote the late Amiram Nir at the beginning of the First Lebanon War. I think there is a lot of justice in this claim at this time. Even if the IDF succeeds in cleaning out the clusters of terrorists in the communities surrounding Gaza, the tasks that will be required from them in the coming days are complex and demanding.

First and foremost is the issue of the captives in Gaza and the problem of deterrence on the other fronts. The war must be conducted with a clean mind. Everything else is less urgent.

But the temporary exemption given to the IDF does not include the millions of Israelis who followed the news on Saturday, astounded and anxious about a war that no one prepared them for. To me, October 7, 2023, was a mega-blunder, a disgrace that the IDF has never known in all its years.

The first disgrace was the intelligence. Again, as in 1973, the system saw all the telltale signs but arrogantly concluded that these were just exercises, idle training. The second disgrace was the ease with which the Hamas terrorists jumped over the barrier; the third disgrace was the ease with which they returned to Gaza with dozens of hostages; the fourth disgrace was the slow reaction of the IDF to the infiltration. Dozens of terrorists were walking around the Armoured Corps base as if it was theirs, and there was no helicopter to shoot at them.

This is a catastrophe for Israel. But it’s not another Yom Kippur War

Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz

Despite the many compelling similarities between the two wars of October, there is one fundamental distinction between them that can still make all the difference. Unlike the original Yom Kippur War, the war that began yesterday is not an existential one. In Hamas, Israel faces a formidable enemy in Gaza. If anyone doubted that, Hamas’ operation yesterday shattered all doubts.

But their devastating success does not change the basic military equation: it is not on par with Israel as a military adversary. It isn’t even in the same league.

In 1973, in the first days of the war, Israel seemed to be on the verge of military collapse as the armies of Egypt and Syria broke through its defensive lines and advanced. The Israel Defence Forces had to immediately mobilise to repel two large (and numerically superior) Arab armies.

That is not the case in 2023, and it won’t be the case even if at some point Hezbollah also attacks from the north. Within hours, Hamas managed to do its worst to Israel but that is the furthest possible extent of its offensive fighting capability. It will be of no comfort to the families of the hundreds killed and those who were captured and spirited away into Gaza, but from this point onwards, the threat to Israel from Hamas is not growing.

Most crucially, as the last of Hamas’ fighters who infiltrated Israel are mopped up, Israel doesn’t have to rush into the next stage of the battle … Israel is not in mortal danger and has a bit more time at its disposal. Crucial time, which if used correctly, can determine how this war, which began so disastrously, will end.

No matter who loses, Iran wins

Aaron Pilkington, The Conversation

There are at least three possible outcomes to the war, and they all play in Iran’s favour. First, Israel’s heavy-handed response may turn off Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to US-backed Israeli normalisation efforts. Second, if Israel deems it necessary to push further into Gaza to eradicate the threat, this could provoke another Palestinian uprising in East Jerusalem or the West Bank, leading to a more widespread Israeli response and greater instability. Lastly, Israel could achieve its first two objectives with the minimal amount of force necessary, foregoing usual heavy-handed tactics and reducing chances of escalation. But this is unlikely. And even if this occurred, the underlying causes that led to this latest outbreak of violence, and the enabling role Iran plays in that process, have not been addressed.

War must not be allowed to spread to Lebanon and Syria

Ron Ben Yishai, Ynet

At the moment, the most urgent task of the entire intelligence community is to make sure that the surprise attack from Gaza is not coordinated and timed with additional attacks that will come from the north and east: from Lebanon, Syria and possibly from other places, mainly through rockets and infiltration attempts.
The main danger is from the Lebanese border and therefore, alongside the effort to contain the attack in the south, the intelligence community must direct resources to the north. Recently, there have been hints, mainly from Lebanon, that there is an intention to carry out a coordinated offensive by Hezbollah and the Gazan organisations. The second main effort of the IDF in general and of the Air Force in particular, after clearing the area of the terrorists who infiltrated Israeli territory, is to prevent them from kidnapping and transferring more hostages and bodies of Israelis to Gaza.

International implications of Israel’s worst day

Thomas Friedman, New York Times (paywall)

The Gaza-Israel border is only 37 miles (60km) long, but the shock waves this war will unleash will not only thrust Israel and the Palestinians of Gaza into turmoil but will also slam into Ukraine and Saudi Arabia and most likely Iran. Why? Any prolonged Israel-Hamas war could divert more US military equipment needed by Kyiv to Tel Aviv, and it will make the proposed Saudi-Israeli normalisation deal impossible — for now. And if it turns out that Iran encouraged the Hamas attack to scuttle that Israeli-Saudi deal, it could raise tensions between Israel and Iran and Tehran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, and also between Saudi Arabia and Iran. This is an incredibly dangerous moment on multiple fronts.

Why did Hamas launch this war now, without any immediate provocation? One has to wonder if it was not on behalf of the Palestinian people but rather at the behest of Iran, an important supplier of money and arms to Hamas, to help prevent the budding normalisation of relations between Saudi Arabia, Iran’s rival, and Israel. Such a deal, as it was being drawn up, would also benefit the more moderate West Bank Palestinian Authority — by delivering it a huge infusion of cash from Saudi Arabia, as well as curbs on Israeli settlements in the West Bank and other advances to preserve a two-state solution. As a result, West Bank leaders might have earned a desperately needed boost of legitimacy from the Palestinian masses, threatening the legitimacy of Hamas.

That US-Saudi-Israel deal also would have been a diplomatic earthquake that would have most likely required Netanyahu to jettison the most extreme members of his cabinet in return for forging an alliance between the Jewish state and the Sunni-led states of the Persian Gulf against Iran. That deal is now in the deep freeze.

Photo: An Ashkelon woman and her children are helped to safety after a rocket attack (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

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TJI Wrap

TJI Wrap

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