[Opinion] Did Hamas and their supporters have more time to make the strike?
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War is on the minds of so many people right now. Conflict rages on from Israel and Palestine, to Ukraine and Russia, and between armed groups in Myanmar.
That’s why I encourage everyone to join this discussion. We should be talking more about world affairs these days!
I even wrote a previous opinion for [The Weekend Brief] newsletter about the Israel-Palestine war in October — This all reminds me of Cold War history jargon! — which includes some commentary from other Medium writers.
Geopolitical Futures and its diverse team of writers, analysts and forecasters have been continuously writing about the situation these wars have created for international politics. George Friedman is founder of Geopolitical Futures and author of many books on geopolitics. His latest writing about the Israel-Palestine War is insightful and a little controversial. Have a look at it here.
Now, here are my thoughts about the article.
“Because it was so hard to imagine who gave Hamas the missiles, we considered that the munitions might have been delivered by ships through the Mediterranean. The question became who might ship the rockets to the region. We considered Russia, which we hypothesized might have wanted to force the U.S. to send weapons and resources to Israel and thus away from Ukraine. We quickly dismissed this theory, however, because it was all but logistically impossible.”
With so much attention on the Black Sea and Persian Gulf, it would not surprise me if the missiles Hamas used to attack Israel were shipped through the Mediterranean. Even the European Union and NATO were locked into strategizing Russia’s maritime attacks around the areas of Ukraine and Romania. Now the Eastern Mediterranean should come into focus, as Egypt and Israel are already being forced to restrict offshore energy production and supplies due to this war between Israel and Palestine. Any way I look at it, the wars of today are increasingly more linked to global commodities markets.
“Neither the Israelis nor the Americans detected the missiles or the construction of various apparatuses needed for defensive warfare in the likely event Israel would retaliate. There is a precedent for such failure in Israel. In the 1973 war, military intelligence failed to detect or understand the large-scale movement of Egyptian and Syrian troops.”
I am not familiar with the historical context around the 1973 war (hopefully someone can comment on this) but I understand that Israel has been doubling down on its diplomatic efforts to entice other emerging markets, particularly Lebanon and Morocco, with incentives to cooperate with Israel both economically and politically. This will inevitably give countries like Lebanon and Morocco a military edge over other countries in their region as they will have the United States’ military support for cooperating with Israel.
“It’s clear that the Oct.7 attack was designed to draw Israeli forces into the direction of Gaza, which would open the door for an attack to the rear. It was a sound strategy that ultimately failed. At this point, Israel is undertaking a ground operation in Gaza. Its infantry is excellent, but Hamas has been preparing for this war for a long time.”
I myself did not see this type of large-scale attack coming. With the events of post-pandemic politics and economics, I never would have imagined that Hamas had the type of resources to stage such an attack of this magnitude. That’s why I agree with Friedman that other state-actors had to have been involved. I will not speculate on which country could have been part of this war planning, but it definitely was carried out over a long period of time; and most likely before the global covid-19 pandemic, which gave Hamas and their supporters more time to make the strike.
Read George Friedman’s article: “Theories on the Gaza War”.
If you like my opinion about current affairs, check out some of the previous opinions I wrote for [The Weekend Brief] newsletter about Ukraine below:
