New Delhi
A week is not supposed to be a long time in international relations. At the end of September, the US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan had listed out an inventory of positive developments in West Asia and said, “the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades”.
On 7 October, a shocking multi-dimensional attack in South Israel by the Hamas, who are reportedly funded by Iran churned the region once again, shattering the fragile peace that existed by launching Operation Al Aqsa Flood.
Though war has been a perpetual concern in Israel, it has been decades since Israelis have had to wonder whether this would be the day that their borders would be overrun and their enemies would roam the streets with slaughter as their aim.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned his citizens that they are “at war”; civil reservists have been called up and videos show close combat on the streets. The country is in lockdown, with the potential for future strikes in the South by Hamas and new ones by Hezbollah in the North. Israel has been torn apart by domestic divisions. No doubt further death and destruction will follow.
CURRENT CONFLICT
We can take a stand on the conflict from two sides: one is based on the current episode and the other on a continuum of events that took place nearly 75 years ago and the events that have followed with alarming regularity. While bids have been made for peaceful resolutions, these have unfortunately only led to an uneasy peace and not one that is enduring and lasting.
While both sides have resorted to force and violence over the decades as a means to settling the issue of a Palestinian homeland within or without the state of modern-day Israel, what stands out is the psyche of both their populations in conditioning themselves to live within this overhang and be ready to resort to brutal means in their bid to attack each other. The reasons for Palestinian anger and Israeli aggression can be debated endlessly—with strong arguments to support the causes and cases on both sides.
Though one can draw parallels with the drawn-out conflict in Ukraine, the issue that remains is the extent of Hamas’ arsenal of rockets and their ability to replenish them. Firing 4,000 rockets in a matter of hours will be difficult to sustain in the long run and building up a coalition of open support as is being done by NATO is not feasible or likely in the current geo-political context.
FOCUS ON LOCALISING CONFLICT
The previous wars were fought in a larger context described as the Arab-Israeli Wars, with conventional forces dominating. The “Intifada” saw Israeli boots on the ground in Lebanon, though they finally had to withdraw. However, Lebanon continues to remain at the precipice, bitterly divided and with its economy in dire straits. Will Hezbollah now risk retribution by directly supporting Hamas?
The main concern is localising the conflict to the Gaza Strip. The principal challenge for President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian National Authority is how to insulate the West Bank from this bloody onslaught by the jihadis. Sucking the West Bank into the conflict will lead to more ordinary people suffering from untold consequences of conflict.
NOT JUST AN INTELLIGENCE FAILURE
On 6 October 1973, a joint Arab Coalition launched a surprise attack on Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Hamas’ ability launch a surprise attach fifty years on has been attributed to an intelligence failure on part of the Israeli state and the famed Mossad. How Hamas able to get the weapons, train, prepare and organise themselves; and carry out an attack, gruesome images of which have been livestreamed all over the world speaks of clear intent.
Capability, the ability to use that capability and the will and resolve to execute this attack did not develop overnight and being able to discern the intent is what intelligence is about, eliminating the threat from the base from where it originates comes next.
It cannot just be seen as an intelligence failure but is a monumental failure of a system. How were the Hamas able to accumulate and fire five thousand rockets in less than an hour without triggering alarms? The Gaza border reportedly has sensors, cameras, and thermal imaging to detect movement and is patrolled regularly and this is backed by quick reaction teams who can then arrive at the point within minutes. Was there some sort of cyber-attack that that preceded the attack resulting in immobilizing these assets and rendering the surveillance grid virtually ineffective. What about space-based surveillance systems? There is always redundancy built in as far as these networked systems and other monitoring mechanisms are concerned.
Images show tank crews being pulled out of cupola’s, women being trampled upon and innocent civilians being shot in their cars. The path returning pickup trucks could have been tracked and targeted to prevent hostages being taken. The murderous spree continued for over four hours and military garrisons were overrun but there seemed to be no response.
Hamas launched thousands of rockets, which must have been obtained and hidden. They used drones to strike at Israeli targets and sent fighters on foot, by boat, and by air on motorised paragliders on the streets of Israeli towns unleashing barbaric acts against innocent citizens. As much a physical attack as a performative one delivering a sinister message.
Though images may suggest a spontaneous action on the part of Hamas it was without doubt a pre-planned, well-coordinated and executed operation. The Israelis were confident they knew exactly what the Palestinians were doing by their sophisticated means of spying. They built a wall between Gaza and the communities on the Israeli side of the border. They felt that Hamas wouldn’t dare launching an attack because they would get crushed, and that the Palestinians would turn against the Hamas for causing another war. They believed that Hamas was focused on a long-term cease-fire in which each side benefited from a live-and-let-live arrangement with nearly 20,000 Palestinian workers were going into Israel every day from Gaza, that was benefiting the economy and was generating tax revenues. But it turns out that was a lull before the storm.
As per the Atlantic, commentators are already describing this as Israel’s 9/11, but that comparison is a crutch—9/11 was about, in the words of the commission that reviewed it, a “failure of imagination” to understand what could happen in America, a nation that had not encountered foreign terror threats of any significant magnitude. Israel has existed, and still exists, with that very imaginable prospect as part of its national being.
DISTURBING IMAGES
Hamas fighters targeted the main settlements and communities close to the Gaza Strip border with the aim of holding them as hostage in exchange for releasing Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and to use as human shields to prevent retaliation.
There are images showing the bloodied corpses of old women at a bus stop, their possessions still next to them. Others are even worse; gunmen going door-to-door killing indiscriminately while residents huddle in fear. More videos are emerging of civilians beaten and sometimes soaked in blood, either their own or others’. They appear to have been transported to Gaza as hostages. The dead are not spared this fate. Two videos also suggest that Hamas took corpses of Israeli soldiers to Gaza and encouraged crowds to desecrate them. A woman’s body is stripped partly naked and spat upon.
The tactics of taking and parading hostages the spectrum of which extends from the Chief of Israel’s “Depth Strike Force” Major General Nimrod Eloni to women who have been stripped has no doubt enraged millions around the world.
REASONS FOR FAILED COUNTER-TERRORISM
What is more important is the reasons behind this counter terrorism failure: internal bitterness, political instability, and acrimony within Israel. In July this year, serious cracks in the IDF—mainly comprised of reservists—became apparent. Military service is compulsory for all Jewish males and females of certain ethnicities for up to three years, after which they are absorbed as reservists. They form a critical pool of manpower and report every year for training to maintain the operational readiness of the IDF. However, many refused to serve or be mobilised in wake of the nation-wide protests against the judicial reforms initiated by Prime Minister Netanyahu, some even participating in demonstrations.
Israel’s counterterrorism efforts are extensive, they infiltrate terrorist groups and pay off members for intelligence. They destroy infrastructure as a deterrence. Israel has long utilised assassination against its enemies in Iran and elsewhere. Their Signal intelligence and technology in gathering is renowned. Bombing raids and military excursions against Hamas are part of Israel’s counterterrorism mission. However, there is no doubt that the tools at their disposal failed them.
Israel regularly tests its response and evacuation systems. It recently built an extensive technology wall—including radar, cameras, and sensors—on 65 kilometers of the Gaza barrier. Its emergency-management capabilities are mature. Still, Hamas seems to have control over several populated areas in Southern Israel. Hamas’s drones seem to have penetrated parts of Israel without reports of counter-drone efforts. Iron Dome, Israel’s famous counter-weapons system, seems to have been no match for this multifaceted attack.
There is no doubt that the current political gridlock has resulted in damaging Israel’s security. It has to introspect and place national security above its internal political bickering.
Many analysts say one of the reasons for this attack was the Abraham Accords, with Hamas feeling abandoned by the fact that Saudi Arabia and Israel were improving ties and thereby abandoning their cause while a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia would have led to stability in West Asia leading to greater irrelevance as far as the Palestinian cause was concerned.
With the Arab world coming to terms with Israel, the US also pressed Israel to make concessions to the Palestinian National Authority, Hamas’ enemy. So this was an opportunity for Hamas to disrupt the whole process.
Hamas also has its backers—Iran and Syria—being foremost among them and they would have had plenty of time to think through how the war will unfold. It’s unlikely that Hamas would have jeopardised its sponsorship by launching the attack without consultation.
CONCLUSION
Israel’s response may seem disproportionate in a bid to divert attention away from their failure to gauge such an attack. But uncalibrated retaliation also has its pitfalls. Israel does hold the moral high ground, given the brutality of attacks on innocents. Resolving a centuries-old issue is challenging but this escalation of violence will have far-reaching regional and global implications. While the immediate priority is to counter the attack, the country will have to answer its citizens as to how, in the modern era, it suffered a massive security lapse. Finding the answer is essential to its future security.
The parties led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have long argued that they were responsible for the relative peace that has prevailed for the past decade or so. That peace now seems to be over. The problem was thought to be under control, but now all such assumptions have been cast aside, and Israel is going to have to come to terms with that.
While one of the lessons that emerged from the Ukrainian War is the need to build deterrence in the form of hard power and that violence still remains the currency for settling disputes, the current conflict in Israel not only reinforces that but also shows the impact on a country where its internal issues have been all-consuming as far as its people and polity are concerned, resulting in the inability to prepare adequately against external challenges.
Maj Gen Jagatbir Singh, VSM (Retd) is a former officer of the Indian Army.