The 2007 Gaza Siege: Israeli Counterattacks on Hamas in the Presence of the First Israeli-Israeli Nuclear Collisions
Gaza was taken over by Hamas in 2007, but the group launched a surprise attack on Israel on Saturday. Militants infiltrated Israel’s border using paragliders, motorbikes, and boats.
Despite its grotesque atrocities against civilians, Hamas may have already reset the political realignment in the Middle East by disrupting the prospective diplomatic talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia. But if Gaza were now to escalate into a protracted ground war, Hamas could also undermine the Abraham Accords, which established agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and break the trend of increasing Arab-Israeli normalization. Hamas was able to relax the Abraham Accords despite the Palestinian Authority’s inability to block them.
Following last weekend’s deadly attack on Israel by Hamas, Israel launched heavy bombardments across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.
In retaliation, Israel has laid siege to Gaza with hundreds of airstrikes that have killed at least 1,000 Palestinians and displaced more than 200,000 people. It has stopped the supply of electricity, food and fuel.
The U.S. World Food Program has called for the creation of humanitarian corridors to help civilians in need of food and water.
Israel’s response to the 2014 Palestinian Missing Persons Abduction and Assassination triggered by the Israeli Defense Forces in the West Bank
In 2014, after the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers by Hamas-affiliated militants in the West Bank, Israel Defense Forces arrested hundreds of Hamas militants in the territory. In response, Hamas stepped up rocket attacks from Gaza, triggering a weeks-long war that killed dozens of Israeli soldiers and more than 2,000 Palestinians, including many civilians.
The first shipment of U.S. weapons arrived in Israel, as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling to Israel to deliver a message of solidarity and support, the State Department announced.
On Tuesday, In Washington, President Joe Biden called Hamas’ attack on Israel “pure unadulterated evil” and promised to “make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of itself.”
Fourteen Americans are dead in Israel and more than 20 are missing, said Biden. In an interview on NPR’s All Things Considered, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said there are some Americans among dozens of those held hostage by Hamas but called it “a very small number of Americans that we know of.”
“There’s also a larger number of Americans that are just unaccounted for. Some may turn up to be in the hostage pool. We just don’t know. Kirby said they are trying to get as much information as they can.
On the Jewish Simchat Torah holiday there was bloodshed and on the 50th anniversary of the start of the Yom Kippur War Israel came under attack from Arab countries.
Militants broke a fence on the Gaza-Israel border and took control of several Israeli communities. They paraglided over the border and gunned down civilians at a music festival.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel’s response will change the Middle East during a meeting with the mayors of southern border towns.
The experts who follow the region point to key developments in Israel and the Palestinian territories over the course of the last year as the starting point for this explosion of violence.
Tal Schneider, the political and diplomatic correspondent for The Times of Israel, told NPR that Netanyahu’s appointment of two controversial figures into his cabinet intensified tensions within Israeli politics.
“He nominated someone who was convicted for eight times in inciting violence against Arabs,” Schneider said, referring to Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security. Someone who was not supposed to sit in the government and who was banned by us for being Israeli is this person. Netanyahu made him a strong leader and someone who is fully engaged in politics.”
After mass protests broke out for months, Netanyahu decided to delay his plan to change Israel’s judiciary, even though it had to be done due to support from far-right politicians.
Telhami said Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist group by Israel, the U.S. and European countries, saw the “perfect political opportunity for them, in a horrific way, to reshuffle the deck” and to also neutralize the influence of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, led by Mahmoud Abbas.
“You have an increase in settler violence, an encroachment in East Jerusalem, which is really critical,” Telhami said. People in the Arab and Muslim world don’t know how important Jerusalem is to the Palestinians. That’s why Hamas named the operation Al Aqsa Flood, a reference to the holy mosque in Jerusalem. So, they’re trying to capture that mood.”
“At first [the Palestinians] were counting on Biden to do something after Trump. That didn’t happen. They were counting on the Arab states to do something. He said the Saudis and Israelis were trying to make peace without them.
Some Israelis are blaming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for emboldening Hamas by focusing disproportionately on the West Bank and engaging in policies that have served to weaken the Palestinian Authority.
“They think they’ve undermined Israeli deterrence. Telhami said that they have shown Israel to be weaker than it is. They are popular in the Arab and Muslim countries and people are coming to support them since they have madepeace with Egypt and Israel.
Hamas’ ability to survive anIsraeli response is in question at the moment. And even with its military superiority, Telhami and Schneider see no winning military strategy for Israel.
“If I were in the Biden administration’s position, I would already start laying out knowing that there’s going to be a deadlock,” he said. Even though there’s a military outcome that ends the military part of the conflict, they need to plan for a political shift that is more dramatic than they were anticipating.
“The war is not outside of Israel. Schneider said that it’s inside Israel. I don’t recall that at all in recent history. We are losing a lot of time. They’re losing big time. The circle of blood has no end in sight. A completely lose-lose situation. It’s horrible.
TEL AVIV — Dirty dishes are piled high in 51-year-old Ido Dan’s home these days. There are still decorations for his twin 6-year-old girls’ birthday party. The tech start-up coach has spent every waking moment trying to find out the whereabouts of several family members who disappeared Saturday after Hamas militants stormed into their towns killing civilians and taking others hostage. An NPR Morning Edition team in Israel spoke with Dan following the attack.
“If there’s one message that I want to pass to the Hamas is whatever your objectives or goals are, leave the elderly and the kids out of it,” Dan said. “Just let them go first.” Just allow them to go.
The people of Gaza are under a new siege by Israel, which has cut off food, fuel, water, and electricity from entering. According to the Red Cross there will be a lack of fuel and power plants will be shut down within hours.
As Israeli forces have carried out air strikes on the Gaza Strip, killing at least 1,055 people there, the military wing of Hamas has threatened to execute hostages for every bomb dropped on a home without warning.
Dan said that the hostages are more likely being held as a bargaining chip, because what it says in Arabic isn’t very helpful.
But Dan is still alarmed not only by the way Hamas carried out such a highly choreographed invasion that involved more than 1000 militant fighters and the “killings and murders and ruthless humiliation of bodies we saw only with ISIS.” He was worried that Israel’s intel services were not made aware of the attack that many in Israel say is the country’s 9/11.
If the government, including the commanders at the border, the minister of defense, the prime minister and the soldiers at the border, all of them should be thrown out or jailed, then I think we should do something about it. I’m not sure what happened here. Dan said that nobody can. Taylor Haney and Nina Kravinsky produced the radio version of the story. The digital version was edited by a person.
In a phone interview with NPR on Tuesday, Ali Barakeh, a senior Hamas official, said the attack came in response to Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people in Jerusalem and the West Bank. He said it was also meant to free thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
It is considered a terrorist organization by a number of Western countries. “Hamas has only one agenda, to destroy Israel and to murder Jews,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters Thursday at a press conference in Israel.
The organization’s political chief is Ismail Haniyeh, who is based in Doha, Qatar. He took over from longtime leader Khaled Meshaal. The U.S. State Department has designated Haniyeh a terrorist, noting his “close links” with Hamas’ military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
The surprise attack that happened on the weekend was well-orchestrated and required significant planning, most experts agree. Israel launched bombs into Gaza and promised a “complete siege.” Unsurprisingly, this triggered a huge retaliation.
C. Ross Anthony is a senior economist at Rand Corp., and co-author of the book Alternatives in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. They were able to capture and kill people in a way that they never have before. “So that will inspire people in the Middle East, unfortunately, and probably some of the people on the West Bank.”
Dennis Jett, a retired ambassador and professor at Pennsylvania State University, said that Hamas learned a lesson after abducting an Israeli soldier. Five years later, Shalit was turned over in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian and Arab-Israeli prisoners held by Israel.
In the year after the Israeli-Gaza conflict, an opinion poll done by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in the West Bank and Gaza Strip showed a huge increase in support for Hamas.
After the conflict, Israel thought it had denuded Hamas and limited its potential for continued violence, Panikoff says. He states that Israel had a policy of mowing the grass. Going after Hamas, getting a lot of the rockets and trying to get their militant leaders killed or captured.
The planning and execution of the battle were a secret, according to a Hamas representative. The zero hour was confidential, and nobody outside of Hamas knew about it.
According to Jett, Israel was overly confident of its defense against a Hamas attack and diverted its attention away from Gaza and toward the West Bank.
The wall was constructed with an Iron Dome missile system and failed as a result of the concentrated effort that was put into suppressing people in the West Bank. The Iron Dome was overwhelmed.
An official of Hamas says it’s “not rocket science” and that the “nuclear attack” was not initiated by Iran
Iran denied any involvement in the attack. Barakeh says that Iran knows Hamas fights Israel and offers them support. we don’t take orders from anyone. We were the ones in Hamas who planned this operation and when the operation began, we immediately informed all our friends and allies. There was no prior coordination regarding this operation.”
Panikoff believes that Hamas would probably have required “Iranian acquiescence” for such an operation, but says it’s unclear whether Tehran would have helped with specific planning.
Barakeh, the official of Hamas, tells NPR that there are pledges from our allies that they won’t leave us alone, but didn’t give any more details.
Who governs Gaza? How do you deal with it? Because I think they would want to dislodge Hamas, but not necessarily to govern Gaza themselves,” he says.