Hamas launches massive suicide attack on Israel

Photo: The Atlantic

By now, you have probably read about or seen news of the huge attack out of Gaza on Israel by Hamas militants.  At this writing, Hamas has fired over 2,500 ground-to-ground rockets into Israel.  It was said to be such a massive missile attack, nearly all at once, that it overwhelmed Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome missile defense system, and many Hamas missiles got through and have damaged buildings and killed civilians in towns all over southern Israel.

The New York Times is reporting at this hour that at least 100 Israeli citizens have been killed – military and civilian – along with some 198 Palestinians.  More than 1,600 Israelis, most of them civilians, have been wounded.  About 2,000 Palestinians have been wounded.  It is unknown how many of the Palestinians were Hamas militants killed in Israel or civilians and members of Hamas killed within Gaza by Israeli air strikes and artillery which continue to hit Hamas targets inside Gaza nearly 24 hours after the start of what Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu calls a “war.”

The Hamas attack on Israel was multi-pronged:  missiles were fired against Israeli civilian towns and cities, including Jafa and Tel Aviv, and military posts in southern Israel.  Hamas militants used bulldozers to break through the heavily defended fence around Gaza and swarmed through mostly on foot with some on motorcycles and in civilian cars.  Hamas militants are said to have used manned motorized hang gliders to strike deeper into Israel, along with armed drones that were deployed to attack Israeli military posts.  At least one Israeli tank is said to have been destroyed by an armed Hamas drone.

The attack comes 50 years after the surprise attack on Israel by Egypt and Syria on Yom Kippur in 1973.  The attack this time was launched on another Jewish holiday, Simchat Torah, marking the end of the annual cycle of Torah readings.  Israel was as unprepared for today’s attack as it was for the one in 1973, raising questions about the efficacy of Israel’s intelligence agencies such as the Mossad.  In the 1973 attack, Egypt deployed its air force, 100,000 troops, more than 1,200 tanks and thousands of artillery pieces and mortars, crossing the Suez Canal and striking deep into Israel territory in the Sinai.  The Syrian military launched its attack in the Golan Heights on land that had been occupied by Israel since the Six Day war in 1967.

You will note that the attack on Yom Kippur in 1973 was an all-out military assault by two nations that had significant armies and air forces.  The aim of the simultaneous attacks on Yom Kippur was to retake land that had been seized by Israel six years previously.  Egypt sought to take back the Sinai and Syria wanted to retake the land in the Golan Heights that Israel was holding. 

The Palestinians in the Gaza strip do not have an army or an air force.  Hamas, which rules the Gaza strip, has rockets and Hamas militants, and that is what they used to launch the attack.  Every assault by Palestinians on Israel over the last fifty to sixty years has been asymmetric and made use of what Palestinians had:  terrorists willing to plant bombs and blow themselves up with suicide vests, and missiles, many at first home made, launched into Israel from Gaza, Lebanon, the Golan Heights and Syria.   

Today’s attack by Hamas amounts to a massive suicide attack on the nation they consider their enemy.  Hamas doesn’t have tanks or howitzers or armored personnel carriers or combat jets.  They have missiles, armed Kamakazi drones, rifles, anti-tank weapons, light mortars, and RPG-7’s.  That is what they deployed today against Israel.  It is unknown at this time how many Hamas militants managed to cross through into Israel from Gaza, but there have been reports of armed militants in civilian clothes running through small Israeli towns and Kibbutz settlements shooting wildly at civilians and any Israeli soldiers they came upon.  Every Hamas militant who crossed through the fence around Gaza was on a suicide mission because they know that Israel will strike back and hunt down and kill or capture every militant they can find.

During the initial days of the Yom Kippur War, Egypt and Syria managed to take parts of the Sinai and the Golan Heights before Israel counterattacked with its army and air force.  By the last days of the war, Israel had retaken the Golan Heights and moved its forces to within 18 miles of the Syrian capital of Damascus.  Using paratroopers, Israel managed to destroy a strategic bridge and other targets in the border region between Syria, Jordan, and Iraq.  In the south, Israel drove Egyptian forces back across the Suez Canal and moved to within 60 miles of Cairo, occupying hundreds of square miles west of the Suez Canal.  Negotiations to end the war began with Israel holding those lands and threatening the capitals of both Egypt and Syria.

Hamas doesn’t have enough militants to hold even a square foot of Israel.  Their goal was not to take land, it was to take hostages, and there are reports of dozens of Israeli citizens and soldiers having been captured by Hamas militants and taken back into Gaza.  After Israel has killed or captured every Hamas militant who crossed into Israel and carried out retaliatory strikes inside Gaza against Hamas, there will be a stalemate, not over land, but over hostages. 

The last time Hamas held an Israeli soldier, it took Israel three years to negotiate his release.  Israel had to free over 2,000 Palestinian militants to rescue that single soldier.  Military experts are just beginning to guess what Israel will have do to take its citizens back from being held hostage inside the Gaza strip.  Israel will continue its attacks from the air and with missiles and artillery, and if past is prelude, they will end up launching ground attacks with infantry and tanks into the Gaza strip.  They will search for the hostages during the ground assault, but they did the same thing before and were unable to locate the hostage held by Hamas.  The Gaza strip has 2 million Palestinians crammed into 140 square miles.  It is one of the most densely populated places on the planet with countless basements and other places to hide hostages.  It is expected there will be negotiations for the return of the hostages, and experts say they will go on for years.

The Hamas attack comes at a moment when Benjamin Netanyahu’s hold on power in Israel is tenuous at best.  His attacks on the Israeli judiciary have caused huge and continuous demonstrations in the streets of major Israeli population centers such as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.  Israeli air force reserve officers refused to show up for regular training in protest, and other members of Israel Defense Forces have also not shown up for work. 

The blame game in Israel over how such a huge attack was launched without the knowledge of Israel’s military or intelligence agencies has already begun.  As happened after the Yom Kippur war, there will be official commissions to investigate Israel’s failure to foresee or plan for such an attack.  This one happened on Netanyahu’s watch, and he is not expected to come out well, when all is said and done.  Israel hasn’t lost this many of its citizens to enemy attack in decades.

Taking hostages was the end-goal of Hamas.  They cannot defeat Israel militarily, but their suicide attack today had political, not military goals. It has been this way since Israel fought its war of Independence in 1948.  Militant Palestinian militias have launched thousands of suicide attacks on Israel. In a series of articles I wrote from Israel and Lebanon back in 1974 and 1975, I called it a terrorist war, but as the saying goes, one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. 

Wars over that tiny piece of land that includes the holiest places in Judaism and Christianity and one of the holiest places in the Muslim faith have been going on not merely for centuries but millennia. The imbalance in power in modern times between Israel and Palestinians will continue.  It is by any measure the longest continuous war in modern history, and today’s suicide attack by Hamas on Israel will not end it.