“Binyamin Netanyahu’s security concept has failed” – Kommersant FM

Hamas has been preparing for a military operation against Israel for a year. According to Israeli media, one of the captured members of the group spoke about this. According to him, the militants are surprised that the enemy army did not expect this. Experts note that Israel might not be ready for an attack, including due to the tense internal situation. Since the beginning of the year, protests against judicial reform have not subsided in the country. In addition, as local journalists write, intelligence services last week predicted that Hamas would want to avoid war due to potential casualties among the population of the Gaza Strip. Kommersant FM columnist Mikhail Gurevich talks about how such a tragic development of events could have been allowed to happen.

The time for conclusions, parliamentary investigations and high-profile resignations will come after the Israeli leadership decides to end hostilities. But it is already clear today that the security concept built by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over more than a decade in power has failed.

It consisted in constantly maintaining a conflict between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas – a kind of Middle Eastern version of the principle of divide and rule. On the one hand, Israel pointedly turned away from Mahmoud Abbas, but at the same time demanded that he perform police functions, including the arrest of terrorists. On the other hand, he fought regularly and then negotiated a truce with militants from Gaza.

It turned out that, from the point of view of an ordinary Palestinian, the leadership in Ramallah, although recognized by many countries of the world, is in fact the minions of the Zionists, whom they do not respect and humiliate in every possible way. Hamas, on the contrary, are real fighters for national pride. This confrontation permanently gave rise to conflicts between Palestinian factions and allowed Israel to claim that there was no partner with whom it made sense to negotiate a political settlement. Like, which one of them can you trust if they hate each other?

Another important point of the system was the belief that both Ramallah and Hamas were very corrupt and would be willing to comply with some unspoken rules of the game for money, which, in fact, happened for many years until October 7th happened. But literally a week before the events, army intelligence representatives assured that Hamas was not interested in fighting.

Qatar just transferred the next tranche to salaries of officials, and Tel Aviv increased quotas on the number of Gazans who can work in Israel. It turned out that money is great, but the Islamists have their own plan. Which one, we don’t yet fully know. But, by the way, there is a version that the reason for the start of the war was the prospect of normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

In addition to various concessions to Riyadh, the plan includes assistance to the Palestinians. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud has repeatedly emphasized how important it is for him to help the residents of the occupied territories. A delegation from Ramallah even made a special trip to the Saudis to discuss how much money the Mahmoud Abbas administration would receive if a deal was concluded. The numbers sounded pretty decent.

But Hamas was not at the negotiations. And no one offered him an increase in payments. If the plan were fully implemented, then Mahmoud Abbas would significantly strengthen his position, and it would become extremely difficult for the Islamists to explain to the Palestinians that they are still tough guys. It is not surprising that in this prospect they saw mortal danger for themselves. They urgently needed to come to the fore to show the whole world that it was necessary to negotiate, and preferably only with them.

It turns out that the bloody events of Saturday occurred in full accordance with Netanyahu’s concept. He simply did not expect such a development of the scenario or hoped to avoid it. However, these are questions for investigations, which, as already said, will begin immediately after the end of the war.

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