L‘frightening. This Shabbat, the Jewish holiday of the Torah, millions of Israelis are awakened by sirens. A deluge of rockets fell on the country, as far as Tel Aviv and the suburbs of Jerusalem. Although almost all of them are intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system, some nevertheless cause damage and casualties.
For civilians living around the Gaza Strip, the situation is much worse. Families barricade themselves in their safe rooms to escape Hamas terrorists who burn houses, kill or take hostages. A rave party bringing together 5,000 young people ends under gunfire in a general panic. The Sderot police station is occupied by Hamas commandos who even manage to infiltrate the Israeli divisional headquarters, paralyzing its action for many hours. The toll is very heavy: more than 250 killed, more than 1,500 injured, dozens of hostages dragged into underground spaces in Gaza: a nightmare scenario for Israel.
Hamas, champion of the Palestinian cause
How can we not draw a parallel with the Yom Kippur War, also triggered on a sacred day in the Jewish calendar, almost fifty years to the day, by a combined surprise attack by the Syrian and Egyptian armies? It’s the same stupor, the same psychological shock. And yet, there again, there was no shortage of warnings. In 1973, the Labor government of Golda Meir had ignored this, preferring misleading assurances from military intelligence that the Arabs would not dare confront the supremacy of the IDF. Here again, they dared.
In this fifth round of the Gaza war, but very different from the others, Hamas managed to carry out a combined attack by land, air and sea, and above all to occupy Israeli towns and villages, which was not happened since the 1948 war. The resounding failure for Israel allows the Islamist movement to present itself as the ultimate champion of the Palestinian cause, with dramatic consequences on each side of the border.
The same military failure. As in the early days of the Yom Kippur War, the IDF was caught off guard, unable to analyze weak signals or predict the attack that was looming under the veil of military maneuvers. “Where are the soldiers, why can’t we see the IDF? », launched desperate residents on Saturday October 7, 2023 on television and on social networks. Today, three quarters of Israeli troops were in the occupied West Bank due to the resurgence of Palestinian attacks for more than a year, exacerbated by the Israeli ultranationalists of the Netanyahu government, in the total absence of any prospect of settlement.
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