Kenneth M. Pollack
A salvo of rockets is fired by Palestinian militants from Gaza City toward Israel, on October 8, 2023.
Yesterday’s attack against Israel by Hamas came 50 years and one day after the worst intelligence failure and surprise attack in Israel’s history. On October 6, 1973, the Egyptian and Syrian armies caught Israel by surprise and gave the mighty Israel Defense Forces (IDF) a black eye in the opening days of the Yom Kippur War.
The attack by Hamas thus marks the second worst intelligence failure and surprise attack Israel has suffered. What’s more, many of the news reports of the Hamas assault sound strikingly like those from the Egyptian canal crossing in 1973 — almost certainly intentionally.
Like the 1973 Egyptian offensive, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) attacked Israel on all fronts, by land, sea and air — and, in this case, cyber as well. They secured strategic surprise; they created temporary advantages in numbers and firepower. They meticulously planned their operations and exploited a range of gaps in Israel’s fortifications, operating procedures, and tactics.
There are at least three things worth saying at this early stage: another similarity to 1973, a critical uncertainty, and a stark difference.
Hamas and PIJ deployed thousands of rockets and personnel. They employed tricks, tactics, subterfuges, and stratagems that they doubtless had to devise and prepare, in many cases, over years. They took advantage of all kinds of holes they had painstakingly discovered in Israel’s defenses, physical and cybernetic. They have to expect that the Israelis will — as they always do — figure out all of these secrets and take action to ensure that Hamas can never exploit them again. They would not play all of these irreplaceable cards for anything less than major stakes.
Moreover, Hamas has lots of experience with Israel. It knows well that Israel is driven by the iron logic of deterrence, not the niceties of proportionality. And an operation of this size, causing this much death and destruction, is going to trigger a massive Israeli response. Ruthless as Hamas may be, its behavior over the decades has demonstrated that it can and will modulate the levels of violence it uses to try to limit the inevitable Israeli response to what is bearable given its goals.
For all of these reasons, we need to assume that Hamas launched this operation for commensurately important reasons. Something like freeing Palestinian terrorists held in Israeli prisons might be a lesser, included goal, but it would not justify this kind of an effort by itself. Nor would getting more money from the Arab states, or more worker permits from Israel.
It is still early and there is still too much we don’t know, but it seems far more likely that Hamas and PIJ meant to undermine the deepening rapprochement between Israel and the Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia. Everything about that courtship has signaled the waning of the Palestinian cause in the eyes of most Arab governments.
This assault was almost certainly meant to drive that train off the tracks altogether. Hamas and PIJ probably hope that the successes of the initial attack and the extent of the inevitable retaliation will galvanize the Arab publics in other countries in ways that their governments have traditionally seen as dangerous, causing them to pull back from improving relations with Israel.
Egypt launched the Yom Kippur War to shock Israel into understanding that it would never live at peace unless it returned the Sinai to Egypt. Hamas almost certainly launched this attack to demonstrate that Israelis (and their new friends among the Arab governments) could never have peace unless the Palestinian cause was addressed.
Iran has an unhelpful hand in this.Unlike in 1973, when the great power backer of the attacking countries — Russia — had reason to dampen the crisis, in this case that role is played by the Iranians, who have the opposite incentive.
While neither PIJ nor Hamas probably needed Iranian encouragement to try this bid to derail a process meant to leave them and the wider Palestinian community behind, they probably had it anyway.
The rapprochement between Israel and the Arabs is aimed at Iran. It is, first and foremost, a military coalition to block Iran’s hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East. And while it could be a substitute for their ties to the United States, they would all prefer it to serve as a vehicle to lock in the American security umbrella — again, primarily, to deter or defeat Iran.
Consequently, Iran doubtless encouraged this operation. It may well have supplied it, aided it, guided it, and possibly even conceived of it. And that means that, unlike in 1973, there is an important player in the mix who will be eager to derail any heroic efforts toward peacemaking should any of the players rise to the occasion.
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