The Hamas Attack Changes Everything

The Hamas surprise attack on Israeli civilians changes what had been the recent rules of the game between Hamas and Israel, and it may change much more in the Middle East.

For several years, and especially in the last year, it seemed that Hamas had decided to seek calm in Gaza, where it governs, while supporting violence and terror in the West Bank. And in the West Bank, terrorist attacks increased each month. Meanwhile, Israel allowed 17,000 workers to enter Israel from Gaza each day, and there was talk of raising that number to 30,000. It seemed that there was a silent agreement between Israel and Hamas to keep things quiet in Gaza.

But that view assumed that Hamas cared about the lives of the Gaza population, and the new attacks have proved yet again that it does not. Recent accounts of the Yom Kippur War of 1973 have noted the problem of the “conception” back then. Israeli security officials came to believe that after the crushing Arab defeat in the Six-Day War, an attack so few years afterward was inconceivable. Then it happened. In this case, the “conception” was that Israel could reach a modus vivendi with Hamas — because Hamas valued calm in its base, Gaza. Obviously, it does not.