Why Israel’s ‘mighty vengeance’ is just what Hamas wants
- Hamas’ leaders desperately want the de facto veto Palestinians once had on concessions other Arabs make to Israel, and this is the only way they might get it
- Political considerations on the part of Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah all threaten to make an already bloody state of affairs even more dangerous
The attack is not “all-out” in the sense that Hamas expects to win, of course. It doesn’t even expect a seat at the negotiating table. But Hamas’ leaders desperately want to recover the de facto veto that Palestinians once had on the concessions other Arabs make to Israel, and this is the only way they might get it.
The commanders of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) understand all this, but the political leaders who they must obey desperately need to wreak a “mighty vengeance” on Gaza. At least 700 Israeli civilians have been killed in their cars or in their homes, and the Israeli public expects and will accept nothing less than the traditional 10-to-one kill ratio.
5 things to know about the unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel
The much unhappier but still obscure ending starts with the Palestinians on the occupied West Bank joining the fight. They are more numerous than the Palestinians in Gaza – an estimated 3 million – and there has already been a low-level insurgency under way in the West Bank for several years.
If large numbers of young Palestinians in the West Bank join the militants, the IDF will be badly stretched to control both areas at the same time. And that might – just might – tempt Hezbollah to take a hand in the game.
Hezbollah’s leaders have their own fish to fry and they don’t want to join this war, but things can easily get out of hand in this region. There was a brief exchange of artillery fire between the IDF and Hezbollah on Sunday morning. If Hezbollah should be drawn into the war, too, we might all be in trouble.
It’s still true that Israel cannot lose this war: the local military balance is overwhelmingly in its favour. But it could get hurt badly enough to panic if things go sideways for a while, and the people in charge politically in Jerusalem will be looking for a decisive victory to rinse away their recent sins of omission. That makes them dangerous.
There are also extremists in Netanyahu’s cabinet who would welcome a small war in the West Bank to let them do some ethnic cleansing, which in this situation is ultra-dangerous. Everybody needs to proceed with the utmost caution in the coming days, but we know some won’t.
Gwynne Dyer’s new book is “The Shortest History of War”.