Anchal Vohra is an international affairs commentator and was based in Beirut until recently.
Israelis woke up to a nightmare on Saturday as Hamas fighters infiltrated the country’s south, indiscriminately opening fire on passersby, throwing hostages in their trucks, shooting at young people at a music festival and firing thousands of rockets at Israeli cities, including Jerusalem.
Some of those who managed to escape the gunfire gave harrowing accounts of how they saw “bullets fly’’ around them and had friends die in their arms. By the end of the day, at least 700 Israelis were massacred, more than 2,000 were injured and “a significant number’’ were held captive.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Israel was “at war’’ and warned of a massive response. “What happened today has never been seen before in Israel and I will ensure it never happens again,’’ he said in an address to the Israeli people. This “black day” will be “avenged,” he added, calling in reservists for definitive action in Gaza and to prepare for war on multiple fronts.
“This will result in the destruction of Hamas, even if they have hostages,’’ former Israeli Deputy National Security Advisor Eran Lerman told me over the phone from central Israel, fuming with anger and seemingly shaken by the onslaught.
Israel and Palestine are no strangers to conflict. But this attack’s scale was unprecedented, and it wasn’t carried out in response to any immediate trigger — though tensions have been building against Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories in the absence of political dialogue.
But why now? Why launch an attack at a scale that could risk the demise of Hamas and could, in a manner, tilt global sympathy toward Israel, while Palestine loses any leverage it has an underdog fighting a more superior military?
The global response has been predominantly critical of the attack. The European Union’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell condemned reports of civilians being taken hostage and demanded their immediate release. And the United States said it “unequivocally condemns the unprovoked attacks by Hamas,” while President Joe Biden described the situation as “unconscionable.’’
The timing of the attack has also thrown off experts and led to speculation that Hamas and its backer Iran were rattled by the progress made on the normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Just a few days ago, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said Muslim countries normalizing relations with Israel “were betting on a losing horse,’’ adding that Israel “will be eradicated by the hands of the Palestinian people and the resistance forces throughout the region.”
And in a further indication of the motivation behind the attack, Hezbollah said it was “a message,’’ especially to those “seeking normalization with the enemy.” The statement also noted Hezbollah was in “direct contact with the leadership of the Palestinian resistance.”
The deal between Tel Aviv and Riyadh — the de-facto leader of the Sunni Islamic world — spelled bad news for Hamas, as it would effectively end the Muslim world’s collective opposition to Israel, opening the door to similar deals with other Islamic nations and leaving them even further isolated.
Saudi Arabia doesn’t officially recognize Israel, and back in 2002, it sponsored the Arab peace initiative, which calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem — territories captured by Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
But Riyadh’s national security concerns have now taken precedence over its support for an independent Palestinian state — its greatest worry is a nuclear-armed Iran.
Thus, in exchange for a normalization deal with Israel, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman wanted U.S.-backed civilian nuclear energy programs and state-of-the-art American defense systems.
And in the weeks preceding the Hamas attack, the White House said the “basic framework’’ for such a deal was already in place, while the first ever visits by Israeli ministers to Riyadh and by Saudi Arabia’s Palestinian envoy to the West Bank further convinced skeptics a treaty between these historical adversaries was perhaps imminent.
The Saudi crown prince himself raised hopes of a deal, telling Fox News that talk of normalization was, for the first time, “real.’’ He also crushed Palestinian dreams, saying he looked to “ease the life of the Palestinians” — not to a future Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
“Iranians egged on Hamas to carry out this attack because they wanted to draw us into a battle that would sidetrack us from what we should be focusing on — Iran’s nuclear project,’’ Lerman told me. “Sadly, they have succeeded.’’
And as the Islamic world would expect, the Saudi’s have chastised Israel for this weekend’s fighting, ultimately placing the blame on the Israeli occupation. “The Kingdom recalls its repeated warnings of the dangers of the explosion of the situation as a result of the continued occupation,’’ its foreign ministry said.
However, others aren’t so sure the timing can be so easily linked to the proposed Israeli-Saudi deal, arguing that planning such an attack must have taken months, possibly even years. “They have just started talking about the deal,’’ Mohammad Marandi, an Iranian political analyst, told me over the phone from Tehran.
But while no one doubts the attack was planned well in advance, it may well have been launched at a time of Iran’s choosing.
Even Marandi agreed that Iran aids Palestinian armed groups “in any way it can.’’ The country has helped Hamas manufacture long-range weapons, and the coordination shown in this recent attack — launched by air, sea and land — bears the stamp of Iran and Hezbollah’s training and discipline.
“We call on the peoples of our Arab and Islamic nation, and the free people around the world, to declare their support and backing for the Palestinian people and the Resistance movements, affirming their unity in blood, word, and action,’’ Hezbollah said in its statement.
And as Israel avenges its citizens by pounding Gaza, Gazans die looking for safety, Hamas itself faces a battle to the end, and Palestinians lose what little hope remained of ever living in an independent state, Iran seems to be the only one standing to benefit — that is if Tehran has succeeded in scuttling the Saudi deal and wrecking the kingdom’s hopes of becoming a nuclear power.
