“In the wake of the Hamas terrorist organization’s murderous attacks on Israel, the country’s government is admitting—not for the first time—that even Israel’s extensive security apparatus can’t be everywhere to protect everyone. Under the pressure of bloody events, officials are again making it easier for civilians to acquire and carry firearms for self-defense.
“Today I directed the Firearms Licensing Division to go on an emergency operation, in order to allow as many citizens as possible to arm themselves,” announced National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. “The plan will take effect within 24 hours.”
By no means does the order eliminate the country’s tight restrictions on guns. But it’s an acknowledgment that too many Israelis were caught with limited access to the means of self-defense when Hamas terrorists crossed the border from Gaza and attacked civilians.”
“Hamas terrorists targeted primary schools in order to kill babies and children or take them hostage, according to plans retrieved from the bodies of dead gunmen.
The documents, published by NBC News on Saturday, reveal that the terrorists were instructed to attack schools and a youth centre in the kibbutz of Kfar Sa’ad.”
“While the world is focused on the war in Gaza, tensions have risen in the occupied West Bank, where 55 Palestinians were killed over the past week in clashes with Israeli troops, arrest raids and attacks by Jewish settlers. U.N. monitors said it was the deadliest week for Palestinians in the territory since at least 2005.”
“I think the main reason this is happening now is because of the prospect of the U.S.-Saudi-Israeli deal. Hamas understands this is a huge transformative event, and they are trying to create a circumstance where it will be difficult for Saudi Arabia to do it right. This is not spur of the moment. What’s interesting is you had the Iranian supreme leader giving a speech this past week where he attacks the idea of normalization with the Zionist entity. This attack was clearly something planned over a long period of time: the fact that they had hang gliders, they had prepared to breach the fence, they did a barrage of rockets as a way of overwhelming Israel’s air defense system, Iron Dome.
There are reports I have seen that yesterday, Hezbollah [a Lebanese militant group backed by Iran that has links to Hamas] was telling UNIFIL [United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon] to stay on their bases. Meaning, they knew this was coming. The scope of the intelligence failure in Israel is almost equivalent to literally 50 years ago [when a coalition of Arab states attacked Israel on Yom Kippur, starting the Yom Kippur War]. This surprise is equivalent, although in 1973 we’re talking about Arab conventional armies. Now we’re talking about non-state actors, although backed by a state, Iran. [Tehran, Israel’s avowed enemy, has long supported proxy groups opposed to Israel].”
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“I think this is where the hand of Iran is also a very prominent one — that Iran clearly began to think that if there is this kind of a normalization deal, it’s a transformative event in the region. And not because suddenly it’s this coalition arrayed against them. It’s that you’re taking the religious content of the Arab-Israeli conflict out by having the custodian of the two holy mosques be in accord with the nation state of the Jewish people. In addition, there is just the prospect that you’re going to see these countries that are successful economically joining together and becoming more successful at a time when Iran economically is continuing to fail. They call themselves the resistance coalition but in truth, they’re the coalition of the failed and the failing states. So [Iran and Hamas] are being confronted by what could make them lag even farther behind.”
“A group of fighters from Hamas’s military arm, the Al-Qassam brigades, entered Israel Saturday — an unprecedented breach of the security apparatus that controls Palestinian movement in and out of Israel — killing at least 700 Israelis, and at least 2,243 were injured, according to the New York Times. At least 413 Palestinians have been killed and more than 2,300 injured, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza reports, both in retaliatory strikes and in gunfights. There have also been reports of Hamas fighters taking hostages back into Gaza, holding Israelis hostage in their homes, and of gunfights in southern Israeli towns. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated on Sunday that his office is working to confirm that Americans are among the missing and dead.
Hamas has launched thousands of rockets and mortars into Israeli territory after the initial barrage of at least 2,200 on Saturday morning with additional volleys happening throughout Saturday and Sunday. That number is indicative of the massive scale of this operation; in the whole of a 50-day war between Hamas and Israel in 2014, the group, alongside others, launched a total of 4,564 rockets and mortars into Israel.
“Our enemy will pay a price the type of which it has never known,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said about the attacks. “We are in a war and we will win it.” Under Netanyahu’s leadership, Israel has become increasingly hostile to Palestinians and encouraged Israeli settlements in parts of the West Bank, another Palestinian enclave.
Meanwhile, discussions about forming an emergency unity government between Netanyahu, Israel’s opposition leader Yair Lapid, and National Unity party leader Benny Gantz happened, but no clear resolution had been made as of Sunday.
The Israeli Defense Forces have already retaliated with airstrikes against Gaza, which has suffered from blockades by Israel and Egypt for years and has been described as an “open-air prison.” Meanwhile, Iran and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shia militant group based in southern Lebanon, have praised the attacks. Saudi Arabia, which is in negotiations to normalize relations with Israel, issued a statement calling for de-escalation, specifically calling out Israel for its “continued occupation, the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights, and the repetition of systematic provocations against its sanctities.”
In Gaza, fears of a ground assault are growing as residents have been warned in a speech by Netanyahu to “leave now” after he threatened to turn Hamas strongholds “into rubble.” Many Palestinian civilians have sought shelter at schools set up by the UN agency for Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA, as Israel hits Gaza with repeated air strikes.”
“Gaza is in essence a refugee camp (about 70 percent of those living in Gaza come from families displaced from the 1948 war) and an open-air prison, according to human rights groups. The United Nations describes the occupied territory as a “chronic humanitarian crisis.” Israel has blockaded Gaza since Hamas assumed control of the territory in 2007, and neighboring Egypt to the south has also imposed severe restrictions on movement.
Between them, Israel and Egypt monitor the entry and exit of all people, vehicles, and goods. They have not allowed enough construction materials and humanitarian items into the occupied Gaza Strip to enable the battered territory to rebuild from recurring episodes of deadly Israeli bombardments that are allegedly meant to target Hamas, but that often include civilian death tolls in the very dense territory.”