Israel was taken by surprise by the most ambitious operation Hamas has ever launched from Gaza.
The scale of what’s been happening is unprecedented. Hamas breached the wire that separates Gaza from Israel in multiple places in the most serious cross-border attack Israel has faced in more than a generation.
It came a day after the 50th anniversary of the surprise attack by Egypt and Syria in 1973 that started a major Middle East war. The significance of the date will not have been lost on the Hamas leadership.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his country is at war and will exact a heavy price from its enemies.
Videos and photos of dead Israelis, civilians as well as soldiers, are all over social media.
Bibi’s an authoritarian with a strong desire to create a sort of ethnostate. He also needs the media to cover something other than his corruption and his removal of the judiciary’s independence from his regime.
So, I expect this to be extremely ugly and to leave Palestine and her people worse off than ever before.
A major issue is that there isn’t even a Palestinian Authority with which to negotiate anymore. And, Hamas is happy to let Palestine and Palestinians suffer to the last person so long as it means they get to shoot at just one more Israeli. It will go on until Israel wants to stop, which under the current government may be never.