One year ago on Monday, a Hamas attack traumatised Israel’s people like no other event in the country’s history since its foundation in 1948. It rallied a strong majority behind a military response that would serve both the purposes of “annihilating” Hamas – an impossible task – and, unambiguously, of revenge, even if that meant razing Gaza and starving its 2.3 million people.
A significant response was inevitable, as Hamas clearly calculated in planning for an operation that had no strategic military significance. This was not a land grab, or an attempt to inflict damage on Israel’s military capacity, but pure provocation, a way of saying “we have not gone away”, of demanding that Palestinian statehood be restored to the agenda.
A litany of grievances were given as justification – a stifling occupation regime, violations of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, unchecked settler violence in the West Bank, and talk of annexation of more territory. But such horrific tactics as those used on October 7th can never be justified.
That Hamas was able to carry out the attack was a reflection of the complacency of Israeli’s government and military. This was the gravest intelligence failure in at least 50 years, the military dismissing captured planning documents and reports of Hamas incursion exercises, while the political leadership under Binyamin Netanyahu was preoccupied elsewhere.
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A year on and Israel has sought to restore its credibility as the effective regional power, a counter-weight against Iran and its proxies. But it has come at a terrible price. Having reduced Gaza to rubble at a cost of over 41,000 lives, Israel has engaged in the long-range assassination of Hamas and Hizbullah leaders with an network of embedded intelligence sources, destroyed Hizbullah’s communication system, shot down most of the 200 rockets Iran launched against it this week, and invaded southern Lebanon. Some 100 of the 240 hostages seized that day, however, remain in Hamas hands.
Politically Netanyahu remains unpopular, not least among the families of the hostages, sustained by far-right ministers in his cabinet who have encouraged a conduct of the war that has been condemned internationally as disproportionate, and, by many, as involving war crimes. Internally, Israel, owing to its response in Gaza, is isolated and western support for the Palestinian cause significantly strengthened.
These are ultimately the fruit of October 7th, seeds sown by Hamas on that day through its morally inexcusable murders. That this has ultimately left the region on the very brink of a wider war shows how the delicate balance which prevailed for many years has been upended, at a huge cost. That a ceasefire is needed to stop this situation deteriorating even further is beyond question.