Photo: AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg
In frozen conflicts that last for a long time, as a rule, violence periodically flares up and erupts. Thus, the hatred of the militant Palestinians for "Jewish apartheid" spilled deadly onto Israeli territory this weekend. There is no doubt that the response of a shaken Israel will be brutal. Hezbollah, Iran and Syria are looking for an opportunity to actively intervene in the raging conflict
Israel is humiliated. Palestinian terrorists from the Gaza Strip penetrated into Israeli territory at dawn on Saturday at several locations, massacred, killed over 700, wounded thousands, kidnapped about a hundred Israelis - women, children, old men, men, soldiers. The action was followed by an attack with thousands of rockets fired from Gaza. The Jewish state was taken aback, caught off guard. The Mossad foreign security service, the Shin Bet internal security service, the Amman military intelligence service have failed completely. No one had any idea what was coming, the possibility of such a coordinated attack by Hamas on Israel was not even seriously considered. Due to its brutality, the action bore the stamp of the notorious Islamic State. The myth of Israel's invulnerability has been shattered.
The Israelis are in shock. Fear crept in among the population. The nation faced with individual terrorist attacks, suicide bombers, rocket attacks from neighboring, hostile countries and from the Palestinian territories and periodic wars has not experienced anything like this since the establishment of the state of Israel 75 years ago. Images of horror are circulating on social networks: a girl kidnapped by terrorists, put on a motorbike while she begs not to be killed; a mother with two girls in a pickup truck full of armed Palestinians; a bloodied, handcuffed woman being loaded into a jeep by armed men; a soldier being pulled out of a disabled tank... Hamas claims its soldiers captured over 100 Israelis, the Israeli army says several dozen. Certain countries report that their citizens are among the kidnapped: America, Germany, Great Britain, Serbia... Hamas declares a great victory over the Jews. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declares a state of war and declares that what Hamas declares a victory will be its greatest defeat. During the first 600 hours of the conflict, over 48 Palestinians were killed and thousands were wounded and injured in Israeli airstrikes on over 400 targets in the Gaza Strip. The cry is heard on both sides of the border.
CNN interviews the tearful father of a girl kidnapped at a music festival in Kibbutz Reim in the south of the country; father of two girls kidnapped with their mother; Israeli media shows pictures of people whose loved ones were killed, kidnapped, missing, piles of corpses of music festival victims, corpses on the roads, riddled cars. There are reports of armed terrorists raiding Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza and killing people in their homes or loading them into vehicles and driving them in the direction of Gaza.
All of this is quickly transformed by individual pain into collective anger of unfathomable proportions.
The desire for revenge
The shock and grief of the Israelis will very quickly turn into anger and a desire for revenge. There is no doubt that Israel's response will be brutal.
All internal disputes were put aside. Opposition leaders are giving their full support to the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Messages are coming: yes, there were failures of the security system, but we won't talk about that now, now we all defend Israel as one, we all as one will destroy Hamas once and for all, we all go to war as one. Reservists are flocking to their units, hundreds of thousands of soldiers headed to the border with Gaza.
Israelis prepare to defend their country from a young age. Both men and women serve military service. Every Israeli is a citizen and a soldier trained for war operations. Every Israeli knows that the state of Israel is surrounded by countries that openly call for its destruction. And almost every Israeli is ready to defend his country. At any cost.
The all-too-frequent "excessive use of force" against the Palestinians, the all-too-frequent "collateral damage" in the "fight against terrorists," that is, Palestinian civilian casualties in the decades-long conflict, are looked upon favorably. Israel is a state in a constant state of semi-war or war, the most powerful military powerhouse in the Middle East.
A question of national pride - and survival
This is precisely why, after the action of Hamas, which showed how vulnerable Israel is despite everything, so much disbelief and a temporary feeling of insecurity prevailed in society. Retaliation, revenge, in the political vocabulary "decisive response", are a matter of national pride, preservation of the structure of society, the doctrine on which Israel was founded.
The enemy is targeted, the support of the Western powers for self-defense, for the fight against terrorism, is provided. The Gaza Strip is followed by hell, first from the air and then from the ground.
It is not a question of if, but when the Israeli army will penetrate the most densely populated territory in the world. There, on an area of 365 square kilometers (slightly smaller than the area of the municipality of Lazarevac), in the "largest prison in the world", without any perspective, without status or state, about 2,2 million Palestinians live who will find themselves in the crossfire between several tens of thousands armed members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Israeli soldiers.
For the army, there is no greater challenge than fighting in urban areas where danger lurks from every window, behind every door. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are certainly ready for such a scenario, and they showed how far they have advanced in terms of military tactics and to what extent they are ready for anything with the attack on Israel.
As a preventive measure, they deployed the kidnapped Israelis throughout Gaza as human shields.
The weakest link
Hostages are the weakest point in the planning of Israeli military action. How to get even most of them out alive from the hands of Hamas? After the massacre, Hamas firmly closed the door on possible negotiations on the exchange of "prisoners". It is difficult to imagine that the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu could engage in some kind of long-term tension with Hamas, that it could make any concessions. A demonstration of bare force is to be expected, and there is pressure for such a thing in society. Anything else would be understood as proof of the existentially dangerous weakness of the Jewish state.
All Western democracies are in unison disgusted by the unscrupulous bloody action of Hamas, which at the same time is supported in the "struggle for freedom" against the Israeli occupier, verbally for now, by Iran, Syria and the Lebanese Hezbollah. But everything could suddenly change after Israel's military intervention in Gaza, which is impossible without massive civilian casualties.
A member of the Knesset from Netanyahu's Likud stated: a hospital in Gaza is not a hospital, a school in Gaza is not a school, they are all Hamas havens.
The danger of regional conflict
Is Hezbollah waiting for the right moment to attack Israel from the north, which is concentrating its forces in the south? It is assumed that Hezbollah has about 100.000 rockets. He has already logged in the game with several missiles fired at an uninhabited part of the territory he believes is occupied by Israel. Israel responded with several missiles, also very deliberately, at uninhabited areas. For now.
Could Iran order Syria to fire a few cruise missiles at Israel? After all that Tehran had done for him, Assad could hardly refuse such a request.
They were what US President Joe Biden was referring to when he threatened that no one would think of trying to take advantage of Israel's current weakness. Immediately after that, he sent the aircraft carrier "USS Ford" with accompanying war cruisers to the eastern part of the Mediterranean.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is currently on the back burner. Shifting the West's focus to a possible wider Middle East conflict would allow Moscow to take a breather.
One thing is certain: the real showdown between Israel and Hamas is yet to come. The one of life and death.
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