Hamas’s attack on Israel this weekend bore an uncanny resemblance to the 1973 Yom Kippur war, which took place exactly 50 years ago this week. In both cases, careful Arab military preparation was able to catch by complete surprise a complacent Israeli government and military intelligence. Now, like then, a devastating assault was delivered on an unsuspecting morning of a Jewish holiday (Shemini Atzeret, following the festival of Sukkot).
The obvious difference is that the Yom Kippur war was launched by two substantively armed and trained militaries. Egypt and Syria, backed by the Soviet Union, attempted to recapture territories in Sinai and the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967. It was conventional warfare, in which thousands of soldiers died. Hamas, on the other hand, is a guerrilla movement which since 2007 has ruled over Gaza, a strip of land between the Mediterranean sea and Israel where 2 million people live under siege in an “open air prison”. Hamas militants crossed the border and were able to temporarily take over military installations and towns and villages, as the Israeli military appeared helpless.
Such an attack by Palestinian forces is unprecedented. But unlike in 1973, this is not an attempt to occupy and hold territory. It is essentially a large-scale deadly raid, aiming to kill, destroy, and take prisoners and hostages back to Gaza. It resembles the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s attacks in the 1970s, only on a far larger scale. Current numbers suggest that more than 600 Israelis have been killed – the overwhelming majority of them civilians. Many families were gunned down in their homes. Thousands are injured. This was by far the deadliest day in Israeli history, surpassing the worst moments of the 2000s suicide bombings or the 1948 war. About 100 Israeli hostages are believed to be now within Gaza.
What are Hamas’s aims? In 1973 there was a clear Egyptian calculus. Israel had rebuffed Egypt’s earlier offers for a negotiated withdrawal from Sinai, and the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, believed that a limited military achievement would shift the balance of power and bring Israel to the negotiating table. Crucial, in this regard, was Egypt’s transition from the Soviet sphere of influence to US patronage. Sadat took a risk, but the geopolitical context was there to support it.
It seems that Hamas, also, is trying to force Israel into negotiations. In 2018, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar sent a note in Hebrew to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, suggesting he take a “calculated risk” by agreeing a long-term truce. While Netanyahu agreed to some easing of pressure on Gaza, he was unwilling to accept Hamas’s long-term demands, including a large-scale prisoner swap, lifting the siege by opening the international border crossing, and establishing a port and airport in Gaza. After 16 years of siege and several catastrophic rounds of war, in which thousands of Gaza residents have been killed, Hamas may be hoping to break the deadlock. But the international climate is already inhospitable to Hamas, and an attack with so many civilian casualties and hostages will not improve this.
With Israel’s hard-right government, a negotiated settlement appears unthinkable. Yesterday, Netanyahu called on Palestinians in Gaza to “leave” – it is unclear where to – and threatened an indiscriminate wave of bombing against Hamas. Since then, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed. In a cabinet meeting, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich called for “cruel” retaliation, which suggests the dozens of Israeli hostages in Gaza could well die as a result of the bombings. For the extreme right in Israel, this is also an opportunity to escalate tensions between Israel and the West Bank, the other Palestinian territory between the west bank of the River Jordan and the eastern frontier of Israel, as members of the Knesset openly speak about large-scale expulsion of Palestinians as a desired outcome.
There are loud voices within Israel – and not only within the extreme right – calling for the Israeli Defense Forces to re-occupy Gaza and remove Hamas from power. Such a campaign is not unthinkable, given the scale of Israel’s losses. But it would cost dearly in human lives and would lead to direct Israeli military rule of the Gaza Strip – an area that Israel left almost 30 years ago. On the other hand, it is all but certain that, in Israeli public opinion, pressure to secure the release of the hostages will soon mount. This would inevitably require an agreement with Hamas. But such a political resolution would be likely to involve the mass release of prisoners and further concessions in Jerusalem and the West Bank. The chances of such a deal appear dim.
Some commentators believe the attack to be an Iranian-coordinated attempt to foil the Saudi “normalisation” with Israel. Such explanations are unconvincing. The willingness of Gulf states to normalise relations with Israel may have galvanised Hamas’s willingness to act. But a major escalation in Palestine/Israel was already under way, with a dramatic rise in Palestinian casualties in the West Bank, the ethnic cleansing of several small communities, intensified settlers’ attacks, and blatant changes to the status quo at the al-Aqsa mosque/Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Many, therefore, believed a popular uprising – another intifada – was only a matter of time.
It may have been that Hamas decided that an escalation was coming and it wanted to keep the initiative in its own hands, rather than respond to a popular uprising. This attack is the largest military blow Palestinians have ever dealt to Israel. As the Palestinian National Authority, which controls the West Bank, and its 87-year-old head, Mahmoud Abbas, fade into insignificance, Hamas aims to position itself as the real Palestinian leadership for the next stage – even if that means risking a confrontation whose outcome no one can predict.
Yair Wallach is a senior lecturer in Israeli studies and head of the Centre for Jewish Studies at Soas, the University of London
