This Will Be a Pyrrhic Victory for Hamas | Israel Could Win This Gaza Battle and Lose the War | There Are No Rules, and more

They had plenty of help from misguided or inept Israeli and Palestinian leaders, of course, not to mention the potent political opposition from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other hard-line elements of the Israel lobby, but that’s only a partial excuse. Instead of acting as an evenhanded mediator and exploiting the enormous leverage at their disposal, both Democratic and Republican administrations bowed to pressure from the lobby, acted like “Israel’s lawyer,” pressed Palestinian leaders to make onerous concessions while giving Israel unconditional support, and turned a blind eye to Israel’s decades-long effort to gobble up the lands supposedly reserved for a future Palestinian state.
Even today, the U.S. government continues to shovel money at Israel and defend it in international forums while insisting that it is committed to a “two-state solution.” Given the “one-state reality” that is apparent to most everyone, I’m still surprised that the press corps doesn’t burst out laughing every time some poor State Department spokesperson invokes that obsolete and utterly meaningless pledge. Why should anyone take the U.S. position on this issue seriously when its declared goals are so disconnected from the actual situation on the ground?
This new bloodletting is also another sad reminder that in international politics, power matters more than justice. Israel has been able to expand in the West Bank and keep the Gazan population in an open-air prison for decades because it is much stronger than the Palestinians and because it has co-opted or neutralized other parties (e.g., the United States, Egypt, the European Union) that might have opposed these efforts and forced it to negotiate a lasting peace.
Yet this event—and the many clashes that preceded it—may also reveal the limits of power. War is the continuation of politics by other means, and powerful states sometimes win on the battlefield and still lose politically. The United States won all the big battles in Vietnam and Afghanistan, but it ultimately lost both wars. Egypt and Syria were badly defeated in the 1973 war, but the losses Israel suffered in that war convinced its leaders (and their American patrons) that they could no longer ignore Egypt’s desire to regain the Sinai. Hamas will never be able to defeat Israel in a direct test of strength, but its attack is a tragic reminder that Israel is not invulnerable and the Palestinian desire for self-determination cannot be ignored. It also shows that the Abraham Accords and the recent efforts to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia are no guarantee of peace; indeed, they may have made this latest conflict more likely.

There Are No Rules  ((Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic)
The “rules-based world order” is a system of norms and values that describe how the world ought to work, not how it actually works.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s surprise attack on Israeli civilians are both blatant rejections of that rules-based world order, and they herald something new. Both aggressors have deployed a sophisticated, militarized, modern form of terrorism, and they do not feel apologetic or embarrassed about this at all. Terrorists, by definition, are not fighting conventional wars and do not obey the laws of war. Instead, they deliberately create fear and chaos among civilian populations. Although terrorist tactics are usually associated with small revolutionary movements or clandestine groups, terrorism is now simply part of the way Russia fights wars. Although a sovereign state and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Russia first began deliberately hitting civilian targets in Syria in 2015, including power stations, water plants, and above all hospitals and medical facilities, 25 of which were hit in a single month in 2019. These attacks were unquestionably war crimes, and those who chose the targets knew they were war crimes. Some of the hospitals had shared their coordinates with the UN to avoid being hit. Instead, Russian and Syrian government forces may have used that information to find them.

Hamas Attack Is an Intelligence Failure That May Take Israel Years to Unravel  (David Ignatius, Washington Post)
The vicious Hamas assault of terrorism on Saturday truly was Israel’s 9/11 — not simply in the anguished demand for revenge that has followed the attack but also in the strange blindness that preceded it.
True intelligence failures result not simply from a lack of information but also an inability to understand it. Israelis knew the malevolent hatred that animated Hamas and its backers in Iran. What they didn’t appreciate was the creativity and competence of their adversaries. This was a level of organized malice that was, literally, unthinkable.
Just as Americans never imagined that the Muslim fundamentalists of al-Qaeda would have the perverse genius to fly airplanes into buildings, Israeli analysts don’t seem to have appreciated that Hamas fighters could escape the barricaded compound of Gaza with paragliders. Israelis evidently didn’t credit their foe’s ability to operate simultaneously across air, sea and land. And they certainly didn’t appreciate Hamas’s and its allies’ ability to keep secrets.
Will we learn, as we did after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in the United States, that the information necessary to prevent the attacks was in the system? Somewhere, the lights might have been “blinking red.” But in the haunting phrase that came to explain the 9/11 failure, Israelis evidently couldn’t “connect the dots.” They couldn’t see what, in retrospect, was staring them in the face.

What Is Iran’s Role in the Hamas Attack on Israel?  (Danielle Pletka, Foreign Policy)
Too little of the constant hum of the Arab-Israeli conflict breaks through in the United States. Occasional shocking attacks and sustained battles creep onto the pages of major papers but then fade back into obscurity.
But on the morning of Oct. 7, Hamas broke through—attacking Israel on multiple fronts, killing and kidnapping civilians and soldiers, and unleashing a barrage of thousands of rockets. By nightfall, hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians were dead. Dozens of Israelis were being held hostage inside Gaza. This, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is war.
Right now, what may well be the most substantial attack on Israel since the 1973 Arab-Israeli War looks like a massive intelligence failure. The Israelis are incredibly plugged in, both in Gaza and the West Bank. These are the intel operators who stole tons of data from inside Iran without being detected and who infiltrated a satellite-controlled machine gun into Iran and assassinated Iran’s key nuclear scientist without a hitch.
Yet they missed this plan to turn the tide of war against Israel. And they missed it despite the fact that Iran—which has long backed Hamas, Hezbollah, and other anti-Israel militia groups—has been advertising plans to do something like this for more than a year.

Is Israel at War with Iran?  (Arash Azizi, The Atlantic)
The October 7 attacks on Israel by the Palestinian terror groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are being compared to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. In fact, with more than 600 Israelis dead at the time of this writing, the proportional death toll is several times higher than that of 9/11, and the factor of surprise is arguably greater than at Pearl Harbor.
But 9/11 and Pearl Harbor weren’t just tragic attacks. They were casus belli for seismic wars. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has declared his country to be heading into “a long and grueling war.” The air attacks he ordered in Gaza have already resulted in hundreds of Palestinian casualties. Will October 7 also lead to a broader conflagration in the region? Most important, can Israel rightly consider itself to be engaged in a shadow conflict with Iran?
Many commentators scoff at bringing Iran into an analysis of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians. The sentiment is understandable. Some Beltway pundits name-drop Iran primarily to drive their own agendas. And the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not primarily about Iran: It is rooted in Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territories, its brutal siege of the Gaza Strip, and its deprivation of dignity to millions of Palestinians under its rule.
Nevertheless, Iran has meddled enough in internal Arab politics that no proper analysis of October 7 can ignore its role. Hamas has occasionally gotten some cash and political support from countries such as Turkey and Qatar. But Turkey has extensive security relations with Israel, and Qatar has previously acted as a mediator with Israel and officially stands for the two-state solution. Only one state in the world doesn’t just give Hamas money but also lends significant military and political support. It is also the only state in the world still promising to fight Israel to total destruction: the Islamic Republic of Iran.

This Will Be a Pyrrhic Victory for Hamas (Natan Sachs, The Atlantic)
In the hours following Hamas’s large-scale surprise attack on Israel early this morning, Israelis on social media quickly dubbed the day a “second Yom Kippur”—referring to the surprise attack on Israel by Egypt and Syria in 1973—or an “Israeli 9/11.” Not since the 1947–49 Arab-Israeli War had Palestinian or Arab forces captured Israeli villages.
Hamas executed a stunning military surprise, breaching the Israeli border in multiple ways and attacking more than 20 Israeli population centers, as well as military bases. Militants kidnapped dozens of Israelis—apparently including children and the elderly—and captured military personnel. Israeli social media and news outlets filled with calls for help from families in southern Israeli towns occupied by Hamas, sheltering in their homes as armed terrorists went door-to-door. The failure of Israel’s intelligence and preparedness is second only to that in 1973.
But this Hamas victory might prove Pyrrhic. In fact, Hamas itself might have been surprised by the extent of its initial success. The trauma in Israel today should give pause to those thinking that Israel will simply acquiesce to a short tit for tat. As bad as things have been in Gaza in the past two decades—and they have been terrible—the coming weeks could prove even worse.
Israel will now likely go to great lengths to hunt down those involved. The Israel Defense Forces have already begun bombarding the Gaza Strip. Once they finish clearing Israeli towns of Hamas militants, they will turn their focus in earnest toward Gaza.

Israel’s Failure to Stop the Hamas Attack Shows the Danger of Too Much Surveillance  (Matt Burgess and Lily Hay Newman, Wired)
The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. It’s also one of the most heavily locked down, surveilled, and suppressed. Israel has evolved an entire intelligence apparatus and aggressive digital espionage industry around advancing its geopolitical interests, particularly its interminable conflict in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Yet on Saturday, Hamas militants caught Israel unaware with a series of devastating land, air, and sea attacks, killing hundreds of people and leaving thousands wounded. Israel has now declared war.
Hamas’ surprise attack on Saturday is shocking given not only its scale compared to previous attacks, but also the fact that it was planned and carried out without Israel’s knowledge. Hamas’ deadly barrage underscores the limitations of even the most intrusive surveillance dragnets. In fact, experts say the sheer quantity of intelligence that Israel collects on Hamas, as well as the group’s constant activity and organizing, may have played a role in obscuring plans for this particular attack amid the endless barrage of potentially credible threats.
“There’s no doubt that the scale and scope of this Hamas attack indicate just a colossal intelligence failure on behalf of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and in Shin Bet, the internal security agency,” says Raphael Marcus, a visiting research fellow at King’s College London’s Department of War Studies who focuses on the region. “They have such technical prowess and also a legacy of excellent human source capability.”