Jerusalem
Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza is rapidly evolving into a war with all of Iran’s proxies on its borders, including Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. Its outcome will determine the country’s future for a generation, perhaps longer. The conflict is not even in its third week, and as I write these words the inevitable ground invasion of Gaza has still not begun, and yet this is already proving to be an epochal episode in the country’s history.
The Hamas terror attack on 7 October not only revealed a conceptual flaw in Israel’s regional strategy, exposed glaring problems within its celebrated intelligence services and caused the terrible deaths of some 1,400 Israelis. It also shook the self-confidence of Israelis to their core. No more illusions of being a secure and prosperous outpost of the West which could afford short and sharp rounds of warfare with Gaza and then pretend nothing had happened.
Israel needs to rediscover the resourcefulness and determination that have ebbed in recent years
Hamas is not an existential enemy of Israel, that is true.
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