Saturday morning’s surprise and totally unprecedented attack by air, land and sea by the ruling Hamas militant group in the Gaza Strip in Israel’s southern parts seems to be a colossal intelligence failure of Israel. The world over, Israel was known as the Mother of all kinds of Intelligence activities and gadgetry. Maybe the country’s internal political disturbances have harmed the defence structure to such an extent that it has failed to keep a watch on its own borders. Now it has resorted to heavy bombing runs by the Israeli air force over the Gaza Strip as retaliation. Reports claim that Hamas militants fired more than 2000 rockets from the Gaza strip into Israel while its fighters entered Southern Israel by using para gliders and even captured several Israeli soldiers near the border. All the talk and bravado of ‘The Iron Dome’ supposedly protecting Israel from any and all rocket attacks seems to have fallen by the wayside.
Israel has always taken pride in its intelligence agencies, Shin Bet, the domestic unit, and especially in Mossad, its external spy agency. It seems all the intelligence units have failed and Israel has been caught off guard.
Globally known as a country with one of the strongest military forces, Israel has deployed security cameras at its borders, state of the art thermal imaging and motion sensors and sophisticated border fencing which are manned by personnel from both Shin Bet and Mossad. Gadgets like Pegasus are supposed to keep the user government aware of even private conversations of suspects. Everything seems to have failed and it may not be inappropriate to call it Pegasauce now.
According to international news sources, more than 600 Israelis have been killed and 100 kidnapped in these couple of days. On the other hand, retaliatory Israeli airstrikes have reportedly killed at least 370 people in the Gaza Strip, with 2200 wounded. Meanwhile in Egypt, two Israeli tourists were shot dead in Alexandria, apparently by a policeman.
Observing the situation, the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, predictably, said “Our first focus is to make sure Israel has what it needs.”
Interestingly, Hamas has asked all factions of the Palestinian forces to unite and join this war. This call for united action could also be an indication for the future. Hezbollah, in response, has now claimed responsibility for mortar strikes from Lebanon into occupied Shebaa farms. It is accepted by all expert observers that this strike by Hamas has not only taken the Israeli security apparatus by complete surprise but it also has, probably, altered the shape of war in that region forever. Historically, since the 1973 war, it was Israel that was carrying out constant offensives against the displaced Palestinian people beyond its borders. This is the first time that war has been taken to Israeli soil. The West, especially the US and most of NATO countries, will obviously support Israel because their prime interest is to create multiple points of conflagration across the world which would, in turn, help them sell their weapons and defence equipment. There is also the underlying but unspoken and silent aspect of suppressing the ever violent and unreasonable Moslems globally.
Just before the beginning of this war, for the past few months, Israeli politicians as also its general public have been deeply divided over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far right policies which primarily aimed at muzzling the Supreme Court and making the government all powerful. The coalition headed by Netanyahu might get a shot in the arm because of this fresh conflict with Hamas. It is possible the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) were lax because of the confusing and divisive policies of the government. Retaliations by Israel may now be extremely violent but it will only succeed in killing thousands of children and women living in Palestinian refugee camps for decades but very unlikely to cripple the determined Hamas fighters. Armed with aged Kalashnikovs and without bulletproof vests or helmets and moving around in open pickup trucks, these Palestinian fighters have finally shown that they have nerves of steel. The capture of Israeli Major General Nimrod Aloni who spearheaded operations against terrorist groups is an example of small but important victories for the Hamas.
All this obviously will help bolster Prime Minister Netanyahu and his coalition’s sagging image. Whenever blood is shed of hundreds of countrymen, it is only the politicians in power of that country who benefit the most. Apart from that, this temporary success in war might help unite all the divided Palestinian fighters to come together. If that happens, the future of the region would be very unsettled.