Hamas’s atrocities and Israel’s retaliation will change both sides for ever - Economist - 12.10.23
- Michael Julien
- Oct 13, 2023
- 3 min read
The miscalculations of Israel’s and Gaza’s leaders are being laid bare.
THE FIRST hours were chaos. Residents of southern Israel, near the border with Gaza, woke to the sound of incoming rockets and mortars. They rushed to shelters—a grim routine in this part of the country, but a routine nonetheless. Then, a few minutes later, they heard gunfire drawing steadily closer and shouting in Arabic. That was not routine at all.
Nor were the unimaginable scenes outside their homes, snippets of which began to trickle out on social media: Palestinian militants on the bed of a pickup truck, driving through an Israeli town firing at passers-by; a pile of bodies at a bus stop, another at an army post. The morning dragged on, and no help arrived. Frantic Israelis called television-news shows from their safe rooms and asked, in hushed tones, where their army was.
Then, no less shocking, came the reports of abductions. A mother said her two sons, one of them just 12 years old, had been kidnapped and dragged across the border. A video showed an elderly woman, her stiff smile belying her shock, paraded through the streets of Gaza on a golf cart, an armed man seated behind her.
The death toll went up and up and up. Almost a week later, authorities were still counting bodies. In Be’eri, a small kibbutz of around 1,000 people, militants went door-to-door and slaughtered some 10% of the population. An even greater number may have been killed in Kfar Azza, eight kilometres to the north.
For Israelis October 7th was a day without precedent. More than 1,300 people were killed, in a country of just 10m. The death toll exceeds the number of Israelis killed in all violence between Israelis and Palestinians over the prior 20 years. Another 3,300 people were wounded. Israelis had thought Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that controls Gaza, was a manageable threat. Now it has carried out the deadliest terror attack in their country’s history.
The mightiest army in the Middle East lost control of its own towns, and needed days to regain it. Authorities have recovered the bodies of at least 1,500 Palestinian militants—more than a battalion’s worth of gunmen who managed to flood across the supposedly well-defended boundary.
As shock gives way to anger, the immediate question is how Israel will respond. It has already begun a campaign of retaliatory air strikes, which has killed more than 1,200 Palestinians, many of them civilians, and displaced more than 300,000. Israel will not stop there, although its military options are unappealing. There is bound to be more suffering for both Israelis and Palestinians in the weeks ahead.
But the consequences of October 7th will be much more sweeping. The massacre could reshape not only Israel’s approach to the Palestinians but also its own domestic politics. It threatens Hamas’s grip on power in Gaza; it also risks a regional war.
The assault began with a barrage of rockets: 2,200 of them in a matter of hours. That would have been shocking enough: it took Hamas almost a month to fire that many during its war against Israel in 2014. But Israelis soon discovered that the launches were cover for a bigger operation. Bulldozers breached the border fence and hundreds of militants streamed across. Others flew over it in paragliders or sailed round it in dinghies. They fanned out to Israeli cities and towns and started killing.
It took Israel hours to organise a defence. Some units had to be rushed south from the northern border. Once they arrived, they languished in staging areas while commanders tried to work out a battle plan. Several retired generals took matters into their own hands, donning their old uniforms and driving to besieged villages to lead impromptu counter-attacks.
Even before it reclaimed its own territory, Israel started air strikes on Gaza. Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, announced that Israel was at war, and his government began to prepare for a possible ground offensive. The army has mobilised 360,000 reservists and has spent days shifting tanks and other kit to the Gaza border. Yoav Gallant, the defence minister, promised a total siege of Gaza. “No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed.”
On October 11th its sole power plant ran out of fuel and shut down.
Erez, the sole border crossing between Israel and Gaza, is closed indefinitely. Israel told civilians in Gaza to flee via the Rafah crossing with Egypt, but has repeatedly bombed it. Egypt anyway severely restricts the numbers permitted to cross. It is hard for Palestinians to leave Gaza even in peacetime. Now it is impossible.
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