Why did Hamas attack?
The most important question regarding the Israel-Palestine war is: why? Why did Hamas attack, and why now? If these questions were answered it’d be a lot easier to arrive at what a reasonable response is, and thus possibly avert unintentional escalation. As I always say when writing about the dangers of escalation in Ukraine: perceived intentions are important, actual intentions are unimportant. I’ve seen plenty of speculation regarding Hamas’ intentions ranging from attacking at a moment when Israel is divided to attacking to disrupt the rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. I’ve also seen people both saying that Hamas’ advance into Israel was an unexpected success for Hamas to others saying it was a catastrophic success for Hamas. How you see the events of October 7th determines how you interpret Hamas’ intentions which in turn determines how you think the conflict will go. Here’s what I think, hopefully that helps you get to grips about what you think.
The best place to start in any speculative discussion is assumptions. The conclusions I’ve arrived at regarding the war are built on a couple of assumptions and it’s important to acknowledge that upfront, as my thesis could be flawed from first principles if the assumptions I made turn out to be false. My first assumption is simply that Hamas is a rational actor. As I’ve mentioned before on the blog, I don’t think it is useful to assume that important actors are irrational, both because it’s almost invariably wrong, and because it’s an intellectual cop out where we resign ourself to a fickle universe instead of trying to understand it. It would be easy to see Hamas as irrational given that they appear not to have any real chance of winning a war against Israel as the Gaza Strip is poorer, less populous, less stable, and has a much less developed arms industry than Israel. However, I think the events of October 7th was a case of catastrophic success for Hamas; a case where they intended a provocation and an attack but not the invasion Israel perceived it to be. My second assumption is that the timing of the attack was mostly symbolic. Lots of digital ink has been spilled about Israel’s intelligence failure in not seeing the attack coming, but that intelligence failure seems to have stemmed from Hamas using primitive means to plan their attack, avoiding digital technology as far as possible. That type of planning is much harder for enemy spies to intercept, but it is also inefficient and slow, so I doubt that the attack was reactive and based on current diplomatic trends in the Middle East. Getting thousands of people and thousands of rockets together and coordinated for a single attack requires lots of planning which is complex and difficult enough with modern information technology, without it it’s a massive undertaking which must have taken months. That’s why I think the attacks were launched around the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war, it’s a symbolically important date and a deadline.
Based on these assumptions we get the following conclusions, first that Israel’s response is an overreaction. To be clear, it makes perfect sense for Israel to want to be sure that an attack like October 7th doesn’t happen again, but just like with 9/11 in the US I think Israel is overestimating their enemy’s abilities. I don’t think Hamas could pull off another attack like that one in the coming ten years, so an invasion is almost sure to degrade Hamas’ military capabilities, but Hamas was never as capable as Israel fears. Secondly, I think there’s a risk of escalation with third parties like Hezbollah entering the war if I’m right about Hamas’ capabilities. When Israel enters the Gaza Strip I would expect the Israel Defence Force (IDF) to make quick gains against Hamas, at least in urban warfare terms. Urban warfare is slow, brutal, and deadly for the attackers and civilians so there is a real risk of supporters of Palestine seeing Israel’s invasion as a disproportionately brutal response and thus escalate or enter the conflict.
War is always tragedy, and especially so when civilians are hurt. With a place as densely populated and as poor as the Gaza Strip the suffering is sure to be immense and as much as I often write about war from a strategic perspective on the blog it’s important to remember the human cost. I started out by asking: why? Why did Hamas attack and the answer I arrive at is that they thought they were sending a message to Israel on the anniversary of the Yom Kippur war. By luck, skill, and timing they managed a much larger attack than they thought was possible and now civilians on both sides are paying the cost. Hamas probably wouldn’t have attacked if they knew how things would end up, but intentions aren’t important when it comes to escalation, perceived intentions are.
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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
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