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Israel's blackest day

2023-10-10 21:33:05Pikëpamje SHKRUAR NGA THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Israel's blackest day
Israel's blackest day

When I need a more accurate analysis on Israel, the first call I always make is to my old friend and colleague, Nahum Barnea, a veteran Yediot columnist. When I called him on Saturday afternoon to find out about the Hamas attack on Israel, I was surprised by his first response: “This is the worst day that I can remember militarily in the history of Israel, including the mistake of the War of Yom Kippur, which was terrible.”

Nahum is a careful reporter who has covered every major event in Israel for half a century, and when he explained his reasoning, I knew that was an understatement.

This is no ordinary fight between Hamas and Israel. The Gaza-Israel border is only 60 km long, but the shock waves this war will cause will not only throw Israel and the Palestinians of Gaza into turmoil, but also spill over into Ukraine and Saudi Arabia, and most likely in Iran. Why? Any protracted Israel-Hamas war could divert more Kiev-needed US military hardware to Tel Aviv and make the proposed Saudi-Israeli normalization deal impossible – for now. And if it turns out that Iran instigated the Hamas attack to disrupt the Israeli-Saudi deal, it could raise tensions between Israel and Iran and Tehran's Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, and also between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

But back to Nahum's point: Why is this war such a disaster for Israel, worse than the Yom Kippur surprise attack from Egypt and Syria that happened 50 years ago? To begin with, Nahumi said, this is a total humiliation for the Israeli army: "In 1973 we were attacked by the largest Arab army, Egypt."

This time, Israel was invaded in 22 countries outside the Gaza Strip, including communities up to 15 miles inside Israel, by a military force equal to "Luxembourg". And yet, this small force not only invaded Israel, defeating the Israeli border troops; it took the Israeli hostages in Gaza across the same border — a border where Israel had spent roughly $1 billion to erect a barrier that was supposed to be virtually impenetrable. This is a shocking blow to Israel's deterrence capabilities.

Second, he noted, Israel has always prided itself on the ability of its intelligence services to infiltrate Hamas and Palestinian militants in the West Bank and receive early warnings. For the past few weeks, as anyone who follows the news from Israel knows, Hamas has been conducting what appear to be training maneuvers for this type of attack along the Gaza border – right in front of the Israeli military.

But it seems that Israeli intelligence interpreted these moves as if Hamas was simply trying to provoke Israeli army chiefs and make commanders a little nervous, rather than as a prelude to an attack. Israeli intelligence apparently believed that Hamas desperately needed more financial aid from Qatar, which has given Hamas over $1 billion in aid since 2012 and work permits for Gazans to work in Israel — while Israel and Qatar has always demanded a smooth border in return.

"The intelligence interpretation was that they were training for something they would never dare do," Nahum said. "It was bad judgment and arrogant." Instead, Hamas launched an incredibly complex and sophisticated invasion by land and sea.

But now we get to the really scary part about Israel. Not only was Hamas able to cross into Israel and attack communities and Israeli army bases, but it was also able to kidnap a number of Israelis – reportedly including several elderly people, children and at least one soldier – and took them to Gaza. Associated Press photos "showed an elderly Israeli woman abducted being driven back to Gaza in a golf cart by Hamas gunmen and another woman pinned between two fighters on a motorcycle," the AP reported. Photos of Israeli troops being taken to Gaza and dragged along the streets were circulating online.

At the same time, Palestinian fighters took Israeli groups hostage in the border communities of Be'eri and Ofakim, but they were later released by Israeli special forces.

This will be a big problem for Israel. In a previous term, in 2011, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exchanged 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, including 280 with life sentences, to free an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, from Hamas in Gaza. Bibi could be asked to empty all Israeli prisons of Palestinians if Hamas is holding the elderly and children in Gaza, Nahum noted.

Netanyahu promised on Saturday to deal a crushing blow to Hamas in Gaza, but what if Hamas is holding Israeli civilians who could be used as human shields? This will reduce Israel's scope for retaliation.

"Whatever the (Israeli) army does in Gaza going forward will have to take into account the impact this could have on the lives of civilian hostages," Nahum said.

In the end, Nahum pointed out, the heads of the army together with the prime minister, who heads the security cabinet, know now that there will probably be some kind of commission of inquiry into how the occupation by Hamas was allowed to happen.

So now they have to fight this war, make tough decisions between deterrence, retaliation, getting the hostages back from Hamas, and maybe even occupying Gaza, all the while knowing that even if they manage all of this perfectly, some kind of investigation awaits them at the end of the road. It is not easy to think straight under these conditions.

As this column has noted since Netanyahu returned to power, his divisive policies have done terrible damage to Israel. Bibi prioritized a judicial coup to strip Israel's Supreme Court of its power to oversee his government — over all other priorities. In the process he divided Israeli society and its army. And people have been warning for months about how dangerous this could be. Just this week I quoted a former director general of the Israeli Defense Ministry, Dan Harel, who told a democracy rally in Tel Aviv that "I have never seen our national security in a worse state" and that "There has already been damage to the reserve units of the core formations of the Israel Defense Forces," which has reduced readiness and operational capability.

But as bad as Netanyahu has been to Israel, Hamas has been a deadly curse to the Palestinian people since it took control of Gaza in 2007. The over a billion dollars in aid it has received from Qatar alone over the years could have gone to building Gaza for a productive society, with good schools, universities and infrastructure, that could have served as a model for a future Palestinian state along with the West Bank. Instead, Hamas has devoted most of its energies and resources to digging tunnels into Israel and building rockets in an attempt to destroy a far more powerful enemy, thereby depriving the people of Gaza of any option. to realize their full potential, through a decent, democratic and productive government.

Why did Hamas start this war now, without any immediate provocation? One has to wonder if this was not on behalf of the Palestinian people, but at the behest of Iran, an important supplier of money and weapons to Hamas, to help prevent the re-normalization of relations between rival Saudi Arabia. of Iran and Israel. Such a deal, as it was being drafted, would also benefit the more moderate West Bank Palestinian Authority – providing it with a major infusion of money from Saudi Arabia, as well as curbing Israeli settlements in the West Bank and advances by others to preserve a two-state solution. As a result, West Bank leaders may have gained some desperately needed legitimacy from the Palestinian masses,

The US-Saudi-Israel deal would also have been a diplomatic earthquake that would have most likely required Netanyahu to remove the most extreme members of his cabinet in exchange for creating an alliance between the Jewish state and the Gulf states led by Sunnis against Iran. Together, it would have been one of the biggest shifts in the region's tectonic plates in 75 years. In the wake of this Hamas attack, that deal is now in deep freeze, as the Saudis have had to align themselves more closely than ever with Palestinian interests, and not just their own.

Indeed, within hours of the Hamas takeover, Saudi Arabia issued a statement stating, according to the Al Arabiya network: "The Kingdom is closely following the unprecedented developments between a number of Palestinian factions and the Israeli occupation forces," adding that it has " repeatedly warned of the consequences of [deteriorating] the situation as a result of the occupation, as well as depriving the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights and (not stopping) systematic provocations against their holy (sites).”

I am watching how the Hamas-Israel earthquake will cause another earthquake.

Ukraine was dealing with earthquakes in the US government. The impeachment of the speaker of the House, combined with an increasingly vocal minority of Republican lawmakers — shocking to me — who have come out against any economic and military aid to Ukraine has created a political mess that has resulted, for now, in the U.S. no further aid to Ukraine is approved. If Israel were to invade Gaza and launch a protracted war, Ukraine would have to worry about competition from Tel Aviv for Patriot missiles, as well as 155 millimeter artillery shells and other basic weaponry that Ukraine desperately needs. more and Israel surely will too.

Vladimir Putin noted last Thursday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, he said that Ukraine was being supported "thanks to multi-billion donations that come in every month." He added: "Just imagine if the aid stops tomorrow, Ukraine will only live a week until it runs out of ammunition."

Can any good come of this terrible new Hamas-Israel war? It is too early to say, but another old Israeli friend and analyst whom I trust, Prof. Victor Friedman (no relation to me), who teaches behavioral science at Jezreel Valley College in central Israel and knows the Israeli Arab community very well, wrote later today saying, “This dire situation is still a possibility, so how the Yom Kippur War turned out to be an opportunity that ended with a peace agreement with Egypt. The only real victory will be if what happens next – perhaps Israel going to Gaza – creates the conditions for a real and lasting settlement with the Palestinians.” In light of what the Palestinians did today, he said, they can "claim a 'victory' no matter what happens next."

Personally, I do not believe that Hamas can ever be a partner for a secure peace with Israel. Hamas has had many chances over the years to prove that the responsibilities of governance in Gaza would moderate their goal to destroy the Jewish state. It turns out to be nothing more than a Palestinian mafia, only interested in maintaining its grip on Gaza and being ready to serve as a cat's paw for Iran rather than making its main goal a new future for the Palestinians there and on the West Bank. The history of its rule in Gaza is shameful.

But the Palestinian Authority can be a partner. So if there is going to be an Israeli occupation of Gaza to try to destroy Hamas, it must be accompanied by a political initiative that empowers and helps to strengthen the Palestinian Authority so that we can create, as Victor put it, “ a solution that provides all parties with something they can live with. Otherwise, sooner or later, we'll be right back in the same situation – if not worse. That was the real lesson of the Yom Kippur War.”

*Thomas L. Friedman is a New York Times foreign affairs columnist. He joined the paper in 1981 and has won three Pulitzer Prizes. He is the author of seven books, including "From Beirut to Jerusalem", which won the National Book Award.


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