Hamas Launches Bold Attack, Unleashes Nightmare in Israel
Hamas’s audacious assault began with a missile strike from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel. At the same time, the Palestinian militant group deployed armed drones, motorbike-mounted fighters, and paragliders across the border, targeting civilian towns and military checkpoints.
Images shared on social media captured Israeli civilians—normally at rest during Shabat, Israel’s day of rest—fleeing for their lives across open fields.
Hamas’s meticulously planned and multifaceted operation has brought Israel’s worst fears to life: civilians finding themselves thrust onto the front lines of a prolonged conflict as their homes become war zones.
Israeli analysts are describing the attack as the most severe inside the Jewish state’s borders since its founding in 1948. At least 70 people have been killed in Israel, and Hamas has taken an unknown number of hostages.
According to health officials in the Gaza Strip, nearly 200 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes.
This is a critical moment for Israel, a nation acutely aware of its vulnerability to hostile forces, yet one that has prided itself on its security and intelligence apparatus’s ability to preempt and neutralize threats to its borders.
Hamas’s ability to launch such a well-coordinated attack from within the impoverished and tightly controlled Gaza Strip—a region surrounded by Israeli military fences and checkpoints—points to a significant intelligence failure that is likely to send shockwaves of fear through Israeli society.
This incident bears resemblance to the events of the 1973 war, in which Egypt and Syria took Israel by surprise with an Arab offensive in the Sinai and the Golan Heights on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day. However, it is important to note that Saturday’s attack occurred inside Israel and specifically targeted civilians, whereas in 1973, the Sinai and the Golan Heights were under Israeli occupation.
Despite having engaged in at least four wars with Hamas since the group took control of Gaza in 2007, it is clear that Israel underestimated the militants’ capabilities. The most recent conflict in 2021 saw Hamas launching rockets into Israel on a scale and with a reach that caught Israeli security officials off guard.
In response, Israel conducted airstrikes and artillery strikes on Gaza, leading to a multi-front conflict. This resulted in communal violence between Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and their Jewish neighbors, clashes between protesters and Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank, and rocket attacks into northern Israel from Palestinian factions in Lebanon.
The death toll from that 11-day conflict included over 250 Palestinians, including women and children, and 13 Israelis. The current outbreak of violence is already on a trajectory to be much worse, with Hamas firing thousands of rockets into Israel within a matter of hours.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads the most far-right government in the country’s history. This government vowed to take a tougher stance on security. Extremist elements within the coalition will likely advocate for the most hardline response.
The capture of Israeli hostages by the militants will only serve to add fuel to the fire as authorities grow desperate to secure their release.
Israeli security analysts warn that the Jewish state may opt for a full-scale invasion of Gaza in an attempt to crush Hamas, which has consistently managed to rebuild its ranks and stockpile weapons despite being bombarded from the air, ground, and sea.
Such an invasion would be the first since the 2014 war in the densely populated strip, home to 2 million people, and would inevitably result in even greater casualties and further devastation for Gaza’s long-suffering population.
Additionally, there is the risk that this escalation could trigger a wider conflagration if the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah coordinates with Hamas and opens a front on Israel’s northern border. This would be disastrous for the entire region.
Hezbollah, backed by Iran, possesses a larger and more sophisticated rocket and missile arsenal than Hamas, which relies primarily on homemade rockets. Their involvement in the conflict would pose a significant challenge to Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, designed to protect its towns and cities.
Hezbollah dealt a blow to Israel during a month-long conflict in 2006, and its battlefield experience has grown as a result of intervention in Syria’s civil war to support President Bashar al-Assad.
Israel has long warned that any major Hezbollah attacks will be met with a massive show of force against Lebanon, a country already grappling with years of economic crisis and political instability.
Furthermore, Saturday’s events have heightened Israeli concerns that Iran, a supporter of Hezbollah, Hamas, and another militant Palestinian group in Gaza known as Islamic Jihad, may choose to escalate tensions even further.
In the West Bank, tension has been simmering, as it experiences the most intense cycle of violence since the end of the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in 2005. Israeli forces have been conducting almost daily raids in the occupied territory.
Rarely in recent years has the situation seemed so volatile.
“This is definitely a pivotal moment, and in any scenario, Israel will emerge from it in a very negative light,” said Avi Melamed, an Israeli intelligence analyst.
Denial of responsibility! Vigour Times is an automatic aggregator of Global media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, and all materials to their authors. For any complaint, please reach us at – [email protected]. We will take necessary action within 24 hours.
