Hamas in Gaza decided to lead a war on Israel.
The ruling Hamas militant group in the Gaza Strip carried out an unprecedented attack on Israel at daybreak Saturday, firing thousands of rockets as dozens of fighters infiltrated the heavily fortified border in several locations by air, land and sea, catching the country off guard on a major holiday.
Several hours after the invasion began, Hamas militants were still fighting gunbattles inside several Israeli communities in a surprising show of strength that shook the country. Israel’s national rescue service said at least 22 people have been killed and hundreds wounded, making it the deadliest attack in Israel in years.
Hamas, likely with Iran's cooperation or encouragement, is trying to undermine potential Israeli-Saudi peace. There are a lot of Israeli casualties. This appears to be an actual invasion with Palestinian forces crossing the border in force.
But even as Iron Dome is cycling to protect civilians from direct hits, that system has limits.
So Israel will mobilize and hit back hard, I imagine:
“We are at war,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised address, declaring a mass army mobilization. “Not an ‘operation,’ not a ‘round,’ but at war.”Will Hezbollah join in? And if so, does Israel go big?
And there will be hard questions to Israeli intelligence which doesn't seem to have detected this coming.
And a point of order for the article. There is no "blockade" (or "siege" as some call it) of Gaza. Israel and Egypt block the importation of weapons and material used for war. If Gaza was cut off they'd have all died many years ago.
UPDATE: Live news indicates that the Hamas invasion is going after civilians, shooting and kidnapping them. That's how the terrorist group rolls. Civilians aren't "collateral damage"--for Hamas they are the target.
Will this turn out to be a Hamas raid so damaging that it encourages Israel to attack into Gaza without proper preparations so Hamas (and other) forces can ambush the Israelis?
UPDATE: How much can the Saudis tolerate both in scope and duration of Israel's counteroffensive?
The governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran appeared to back Hamas in its escalating conflict with Israel on Saturday.
But how much restraint can Israel show given the shock and scale of the casualties--including kidnappings?
UPDATE: Could Israel strike directly at Iran's nuclear facilities to get Saudi Arabia to give Israel freedom of action to take down Hamas and anybody who joins them in this war?
Or could Israel strike at Iran's oil exports to make Iran feel the pain directly for being complicit in this war?
I hear that Hamas claims to have captured 50 civilians and troops.
Finally, this Hamas attack puts pressure on West Bank rival Palestinian leadership to join in--accepting Hamas leadership, in effect.
UPDATE: Background context, with points I've made above.
UPDATE: Let me get ahead of the "proportionality" nonsense you will hear a lot about in the days ahead as Israel uses far more force than Hamas has used. This will be called "disproportionate" and therefore an Israeli crime:
This reading of "proportionality" is a twisting of the actual law on proportionality which basically holds that if an apartment building houses a sniper, you don't drop a tactical nuke on it to kill the sniper. You are supposed to use levels of force proportional to the threat you face in order to minimize collateral damage.
So again, if the point of the war is to stop Hamas from firing rockets at their civilians, if Hamas continues to fire rockets the force is not yet effective and so not disproportionate to the threat.
I say hammer Hamas until they fear death for a generation too much to attack.
UPDATE: Report that Iron Dome was overwhelmed by the volume of rockets fired at Israel. Yep, that's a weakness. And keep in mind that the rocket arsenal of Hamas is tiny compared to Hezbollah's in Lebanon.
UPDATE: Israel's response will pose dilemmas. Israel needs to destroy rocket-launching sites so Iron Dome isn't the first line of defense. Can aircraft (jets, drones, helicopters) plus artillery do the job? Or do Israeli ground troops have to go in to occupy the sites?
Israel will be limited in its scope and duration, not wanting to exceed Saudi Arabia's ability to tolerate an Israeli counter-strike. The same can be said about Jordan, Egypt, and America, primarily.
The numerous Israeli hostages will complicate a ground operation. There is no way Israel can write them off as already dead and simply wage war to crush Hamas and kill as many of the Palestinian group's leaders as can be pinpointed. But can the hostages be rescued? Won't Hamas just kill them if the Israelis get close? And even if they can be grabbed, how does Israel go in on the ground to rescue hostages without losing many more troops?
Israel can inflict a lot of pain. And that might be enough. Despite my complaints about the failures of Israel's operations against Hezbollah in 2006, Hezbollah has been pretty quiet since that war.
UPDATE: ISW looks for Hamas motives, only one of which is my suspicion that Iran wants to preempt the budding Israel-Saudi alliance against Iran. The other two are to spark a general war of Israel's enemies against Israel or to start the process of weakening and collapsing Israel from within, which is a new Iranian theory of victory.
To add to this issue, the obvious Hamas focus on killing and capturing civilians makes it a little less likely that the Palestinians can reclaim the crown of the Victims Prom. But maybe the Palestinians just like to kill Jews. The refusal of their leaders to make any peace deal that doesn't involve the destruction of Israel supports that awful possibility.
UPDATE: One lesson of the Hamas terror raid is that Israel needed not a fence along the border with Gaza to prevent infiltration, but a defensive belt of minefields, anti-vehicle ditches and dragon's teeth, and fortifications to defend against larger armed assaults.
On Hezbollah, which has a lot more rockets and missiles than Hamas, is Hezbollah ready to fight a major war after it bled so heavily in Syria on Iran's orders to keep Assad in power during the civil war?
UPDATE: Here are some relevant TDR posts--not from a thorough search--that might be helpful as Israel gears up to go to war--officially, for the first time since 1973, I'm told:
Getting To Know You, Getting to Know All About You.
Their Appeal Has Become More Selective.
UPDATE: Palestinian apologists are already at work justifying Hamas massacres and depravity by bringing up "the occupation." Remember that Gaza was owned by Egypt and the West Bank by Jordan until Israel captured them in 1967. There was no independent Palestinian state that Israel occupied.
And the Palestinians rejected an agreement in 2000 that would have given them a significant state. But Palestinians seem to prefer to destroy Israel rather than make a deal that leaves Israel in place.
Fascinating what Hamas thinks proves that God is great, eh?
Destroy Hamas.
I assume these are warnings to Iran to stay out of this war--notwithstanding Iran ordering/helping Hamas attack.
Also, don't assume Hezbollah lacks the ability to put a missile into Ford.
UPDATE: Try to imagine Iranian behavior if they had nuclear weapons. Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, right??!!
UPDATE: Good Lord: "At least 700 people have reportedly been killed in Israel[.]" Those weren't battle casualties. They weren't civilians killed because the Israeli army used their own civilians as human shields. Those were mostly civilians that Hamas terrorists sought out and murdered.
And it appears that a thousand Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists were part of the cross-border murder/hostage raid. Apparently, the terrorists took 100 people hostage who are likely held inside tunnels under Gaza territory.
UPDATE: ISW reports on Palestinian terror groups joining Hamas.
UPDATE: Sunday night I heard that Israeli forces isolated some of the Hamas raiders inside Israel and are in the process of killing or capturing them.
UPDATE: It was very stupid for Hamas to kill so many in such a horrific fashion. Hamas relies on the fact that Israel does not actually blockade Hamas in a full siege, as has been alleged for decades now. Food, medicine, and electricity, to name only three vital things, require Israeli cooperation.
That cooperation is gone. So the clock is ticking on Hamas because the civilians can't last too long without supplies coming in through Israel. Will Palestinian civilians who don't like the Viking funeral ride Hamas has taken them on actually turn on Hamas in the end?
UPDATE: I don't think expelling Palestinians from Gaza is necessary to secure Israel and the "Final Solution" headline is massively wrong. In a scheduled post I actually ran Find for "final" and "solution" to make sure I hadn't inadvertently typed those words in the context of this war. I like that author's work, but whoa, dude. Phrasing. Tip to Instapundit.
If Israel seriously destroys Hamas as an organization and hunts down and kills their leadership and most of their members in this war, Gazans will distance themselves from Hamas like when Germans after the German military was defeated and the country ground into the dirt in World War II, you'd be hard pressed to find a Nazi supporter inside Germany.
UPDATE: I guess I haven't been paying attention to Israeli gun laws, but I'm shocked that Israeli civilians aren't armed to the teeth. Stories of Israelis huddled in their homes waiting for rescue is horrifying. Thousands of dead, wounded, and captured apparently unarmed Israelis proved that was a deadly mistake. Like Israelis until Saturday, I assume I'd never face something like that and can rely on the authorities. But deep down, I don't dare count on that help.
UPDATE: I must admit that while I think ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Gaza is wrong and counterproductive, you must admit that Armenians have been ethnically cleansed from Nagorno-Karabakh with nary a peep from the sainted international community. To be fair, Armenians don't strap on suicide bomb vests and murder random strangers when the don't get their way. So there's that.
UPDATE: Related thoughts from VDH.
UPDATE: America should claw back the $6 billion we gave Iran that sits in a Qatar bank and give it to Israel to fight Hamas.
UPDATE: Regarding civilian self defense, I expected more like this. Tip to Instapundit.
UPDATE: There are complaints that Israel has cut off Gaza from supplies, including water and electricity, coming in from Israel. The idea that Israel is supposed to be the Hamas logistics source even as Israel strikes back after the massive terror raid Hamas conducted into Israel is outrageous.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
