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Yet it must have been foreseeable. The head of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, at the end of last year predicted “open confrontation” with Israel in 2023.
And Israeli military chiefs have been warning for months that their readiness has been degraded by the mass protest movement against Netanyahu’s plans to neuter the power of the Supreme Court; reservists have joined the protest and some refused call-up for routine deployments.
But, for now, quite suddenly, Netanyahu finds himself leading a nation united. This was not what Hamas had been aiming to achieve.
So what was Hamas seeking to do, and why now? The group justified its attack on the grounds that it was retaliation for Israel’s discriminatory treatment of Islamic sensibilities over the al-Aqsa Mosque.
Managed by Israel, the mosque stands on a site sacred to Jews as the location of the original Temple, as well as to Muslims as the place from which Muhammad ascended to heaven. It’s a near-constant point of friction.
As for the timing, Saturday was the day after the 50th anniversary of the last major stealth attack on Israel, launching the Yom Kippur War.
But the Palestinians could find a serious grievance, and convenient anniversary, just about any time. These explanations are unsatisfying. There is a much bigger explanatory factor, and it is looming over the entire Middle East.
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The clue is the identity of Hamas’ great sponsor – Iran. The ayatollahs have been smuggling arms and money to Hamas since the terrorists seized control of Gaza in 2007.
The great looming event is that Israel has been edging closer to a normalisation of diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia, with Washington brokering the negotiations. If consummated, this three-way partnership would realise Iran’s worst nightmare.
Iran, the Shiite state striving for regional dominance, suddenly would be confronting a union of all its greatest enemies – its Sunni Muslim nemesis Saudi Arabia, its Zionist foe Israel, and its so-called Great Satan, the US.
The new war makes it impossible, at least temporarily, for Israel’s normalisation with the Saudis to proceed. The big winners from the Hamas strike are not the Palestinians, who will now suffer anew under Israel’s retaliation, but the ayatollahs in Iran. They have won a tactical victory but Iran, while formidable, is not invincible.
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