The Jewish state has long prided itself on the ability to pre-empt and crush threats to its borders and people.
Hamas’ brazen dawn assault began with rocket fire from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel. Simultaneously, the Palestinian militant group dispatched armed drones, fighters on motorbikes and paragliders across the strip’s border, targeting civilian towns and military checkpoints.
Images on social media showed Israeli civilians – who would have been sleeping or resting during the Shabbat, Israel’s day of rest – fleeing for their lives across fields.
Hamas’s deadly, carefully planned and multifaceted operation has unleashed Israel’s most terrifying nightmare: civilians finding themselves on the front lines of the protracted conflict as their homes became war zones.
Israeli analysts describe the attack as the worst inside the Jewish state’s territory since 1948 – the year it was founded. At least 200 people have been killed in Israel, and Hamas has taken an unknown number of hostages.
Almost 200 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza, according to health officials in the strip.
It is a pivotal moment for Israel, a nation acutely aware of its vulnerability to hostile forces, but which has long prided itself on the ability of its security and intelligence establishment to pre-empt and crush threats to its borders.
Hamas’ ability to launch such a well-planned attack from within the confines of the impoverished, hemmed-in Gaza Strip, which is surrounded by Israeli military fences and checkpoints, suggests a massive intelligence failure that will send shockwaves – and fear – through Israeli society.
Read the article by Andrew Englandin the Financial Review.