How lulled attitudes to Gaza led Israel into a terror-filled nightmare - analysis

We were awakened by sirens in Jerusalem yesterday morning at around 8:15 a.m. It was unusual.

It was also unbelievable that rockets would be fired at Jerusalem without warning. In past conflicts, such as 2012 when rockets first targeted the city, and in 2014 and 2021, there was a long lead-up to the attack. Yesterday the silence was pierced and there was a profound sense of lack of security, and a sense of a major change in the kind of conflict we are facing.  

The scenes of attacks by Hamas terrorists from the Gaza community are something out of a nightmare. Hamas has been trying to infiltrate communities along the border in the past, and use tunnels to launch attacks, but Saturday, October 7 was a different kind of attack.

The large number of points of infiltration and the fact that terrorists entered communities and paraded around, taking videos of themselves next to destroyed vehicles or next to victims of their attacks, brings an immense feeling of insecurity.  

How did we get here?

How did we get here? Hamas is an enemy that is well known. Israel has been fighting Hamas for decades. During the Second Intifada, the group began to increase its abilities, using rocket and mortar fire to terrorize civilian communities in Gaza and on the border of Gaza. After the disengagement of 2005, Hamas began to stockpile rockets and weapons. It used these to conduct the raid in June 2006 in which IDF soldier Gilad Shalit was captured. He was held in Gaza for five years.  

After 2006, Hamas continued to fire rockets at southern Israel, targeting Sderot and communities near the border. Hamas expanded the range of its rockets, striking Ashkelon for the first time in 2008. The rocket fire led Israel to launch Operation Cast Lead, and a ground incursion into Gaza. There had been several smaller operations before this major conflict, including Summer Rains and Hot Winter, but 2009 appeared to be a turning point in the size of the conflicts to come.  

Hamas benefited from the Arab Spring and the chaos that unfolded in Libya and in Sinai, importing more weapons and stockpiling an arsenal of rockets. By 2012, the terror group felt confident enough to launch rockets at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem during the operation Israel dubbed Pillar of Defense. Here, Hamas and Israel stepped back from the brink of another ground incursion.

Hamas was also shifting resources at this time to build tunnels. The tunnels were for smuggling, but Hamas also began to try to tunnel under the border of the Gaza Strip to strike at Israeli communities. In the next round of fighting in 2014, Israel destroyed at least 34 tunnels and struck thousands of targets in Gaza.

At the time, Hamas had an arsenal of some 10,000 rockets and many of them were destroyed or used in the war. Iron Dome was now increasingly a key to Israel’s defenses as the volume of rocket fire increased in each conflict. For instance, Hamas fired more rockets in just a few hours on October 7, 2023 than it did in many of the early multi-day conflicts with Israel.

A turning point: The 2014 war

The 2014 war marked a kind of turning point. The tunnel threat showed how Hamas wanted to get under the border and threaten Israeli communities, such as the kibbutzim and moshavim along the border. In addition, Hamas used sea-borne commandos to try to infiltrate a beach near Zikim. They were neutralized by Israel.  

After 2014, there was a shift in Israeli strategy. Ground incursions ended and Israel used its air force increasingly to conduct precision strikes in Gaza. In general, the large number of casualties of the 2009 and 2014 wars would not be seen again.

In addition, Israel focused efforts on Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as Hamas sometimes preferred to stay out of conflicts on the border. There were exceptions, such as Operation Guardian of the Walls, when Hamas fired rockets at Jerusalem in 2021. More representative of the era 2014 to 2023 was Operation Black Belt, which began with the targeting of PIJ commander Baha Abu al-Ata.  

However, there were disputes about how best to handle Gaza. Defense minister Avigdor Liberman resigned in November 2018 because he opposed a ceasefire in Gaza. It’s important to understand this because over the years Gaza took on secondary importance to other issues. A new, smarter security fence was built and Israel attempted to prevent tensions in Gaza from spiraling into conflicts. This was not always successful, but in general Hamas threats were checked.

Hamas resorted to new tactics, launching a wave of riots and protests along the fence in 2018, which it dubbed the “Great March of Return.” However, Hamas threats appeared to fail. Nevertheless, it also appeared that it could heat up the border whenever it wanted and the number of short-term operations, such as Shield and Arrow in May 2023, seemed to occur with increasing regularity.

Gaza was on the back-burner in terms of security threats because Iran-backed proxies have been increasing threats elsewhere. For instance, after 2018, when the Syrian regime returned to the Golan Heights and defeated the Syrian rebels there, Iran-backed proxies have been active closer to the Golan. Iran has also been working with Iran-backed Hezbollah, which has increased its arsenal of weapons and power in Lebanon.

Iranian-backed militias in Iraq have also increased their threats and Iran uses them to support a network of pro-Iranian outposts across Iraq and into Syria. As such, the big threat is Iran and its proxies, like Palestinian Islamic Jihad, against whom Israel launched a short operation in Jenin in July.

Hamas in Gaza appeared isolated, unable even to get more funds from its usual patrons, such as Qatar. With Israeli normalization agreements growing in the region, Hamas seemed to present an outdated ideology living in the past.This seems to have lulled people into a false sense of security. I spent time on the Gaza border covering wars since 2009. Prior to that, I was also on the border during the disengagement. While rocket fire increased, the success of the Iron Dome also appeared to provide adequate protection.  

Much of that sense of security has now been shattered. The massive attacks on Saturday led to chaos at the border and a security meltdown. It’s unclear what comes next, and whether this attack will be seen as similar to the shock of 1973, or the sense of failure some felt in 2006 during the war in Lebanon.

Will it reshape thinking about the challenge Hamas poses in Gaza? Despite numerous rounds of conflict, Hamas continues to pose a major threat through rockets and now has shown that it can coordinate deadly attacks on the ground.

Hamas has shown in the past that it can kidnap and hold hostages. It did that with Shalit, and Hamas continues to hold two Israelis: Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed. It holds the bodies of IDF soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin, who were killed in 2014. Hamas has enjoyed the privilege of running Gaza and threatening attacks at times of its choosing. It is unclear if that privilege will now come to an end.