Analysis
Hamas did get Hezbollah involved – but not as it hoped
The October 7 atrocities were meant to unleash a massive war against Israel. Instead, Israel is dismantling Hezbollah
October 1, 2024 12:48
3 min read
The October 7 atrocities were meant to unleash a massive war against Israel. Instead, Israel is dismantling Hezbollah
October 1, 2024 12:48On Sunday the Israel Defence Forces dismantled a tunnel that stretched for more than 1km through central Gaza. The IDF said it was “near residential buildings and civilian spaces”. Tunnels such as this one enabled Hamas to carry out its brutal attack on October 7 – and symbolise the challenge of uprooting the terror group.
Israel has been fighting Hamas for a year and the jihadi group continues to control a swathe of Gaza: its terrorist infrastructure is still being found and destroyed.
At the same time, other Iranian-backed threats remain for Israel to fight. The massive airstrike in Beirut that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other senior members of the terror group capped a week of strikes that has left the group in chaos. However, Hezbollah, which has been raining down rockets on Israel for a year, is still a major threat. It fired the first salvoes of its latest rocket attacks on October 8, a day after the Hamas massacre.
As if fighting a two-front war was not enough, Israel must also confront threats from the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen and from militias in Iraq. The Houthis have carried out three ballistic missile attacks on central Israel in the weeks before the anniversary of October 7. The first attack was on September 15 and this was followed up with more on September 28 and 29.
I was in Tel Aviv during the September 28 missile attack. It set off sirens and I sought shelter, along with a half dozen people, in the stairwell of a nearby building. This has now become normal life in Israel. In Eilat the people are sent to shelters by drones launched from Iraq. In northern Israel more than 60,000 people have been evacuated from their homes.
On the border of Gaza in the communities attacked on October 7 the scars are still visible. There are more than 100 hostages still held in Gaza. While towns such as Sderot have recovered, the small kibbutzim along the border have a long way to go. They must also decide how to preserve the memory of the massacres. They have resolved to have their residents return and they do not want burnt buildings sprayed with bullet holes as a permanent memory of slaughter. On the other hand, they still have members of their communities held in Gaza.
For survivors of October 7, and those missing loved ones, there is a sense that it has not ended. One person I spoke to 100 days after the attack described the date as “October 107th”. October never ends. Now it has come round again. There cannot be closure because the war continues and its trauma endures.
However, the war has also grown and Israel’s focus and priorities appear to have shifted. The killing of Nasrallah marks a new phase of the war. Israel’s cabinet has added a goal to the war; beyond destroying Hamas’ military and governing capabilities and returning hostages, Israel now demands that its residents return to northern Israel. This would seem an obvious goal, but enshrining it was a curtain raiser to increasing strikes on Hezbollah.
I remember October 7 as if it was yesterday. That morning my children shook me awake to the sound of sirens in Jerusalem. The sirens came almost two hours after the Hamas attack had begun on the border. Hamas had first targeted border communities with rocket fire, before slowly extending its barrage of thousands of rockets to include areas such as Jerusalem. I drove down to the border to report on the unfolding disaster.
At the time it was not known how bad the situation was. Only later, on October 8 and in subsequent days, did I learn how many people had been killed and kidnapped.
Hamas carried out the October 7 attack to create a fundamental shift in the region. It wanted to let loose a massive war that it believed would draw in other parts of the Iranian-backed axis of terrorist groups.
Then, Hamas hoped Israel would be pressured into a ceasefire that would enable Hamas to remain in Gaza and also expand its presence in the West Bank. Hamas assumed history was on its side. Backed by Iran, Russia and China, it was also hosted by Qatar and had support from Turkey.
A year after the Hamas attack the terrorist group continues to cling stubbornly to parts of Gaza. It holds hostages and assumes this makes Israel reticent to clear it out of the rest of Gaza where it hides amid rubble and civilians. It also gambles on the West to pressure Israel to do a deal.
It had also hoped that Hezbollah would deter Israel. Hezbollah is now being systematically destroyed and Hamas has lost one of its key allies.
If Israel is willing to go all the way in Gaza and destroy Hamas then peace might be achieved. If it is left in Gaza it will continue to pose a threat.
Seth J. Frantzman is the senior Middle East analyst for the Jerusalem Post, an adjunct Fellow at The Foundation for Defence of Democracies and author of The October 7 War: Israel’s Battle for Security in Gaza (2024)