Israel Rocked by Unprecedented Hamas Surprise Attack

TEL AVIV, Israel—Israel is reeling from an unprecedented incursion of Hamas militants across the Gaza border early Saturday that killed at least 250 people and wounded more than 1,400, with the death toll expected to rise. In a day of intense fighting, Palestinian commandos from the group seized military bases, maintained control of towns along the border for hours, and reportedly took scores of Israeli soldiers and civilians prisoner, rushing them across into Gaza.

As part of an Israeli counterattack, at least 232 Palestinians have been killed in bombardments on Gaza and more than 1,600 injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

The bloodiest day in decades in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict started just after 6 in the morning on Saturday, as Israelis were set to celebrate the last day of the Jewish High Holidays. Hamas militants attacked via the land, sea, and air.

Israeli special forces were still searching house to house into the evening in several communities in southern Israel, near the Gaza border, engaging with Palestinians militants in running firefights and seeking to free hostages held in their own homes. Much of Israel also remained under rocket fire from Gaza, as it had been throughout the day, including the large metropolises of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Israel responded with sporadic airstrikes into Gaza and the mobilization of thousands of reservists, with more in the offing.

“We are at war,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, stern-faced, told the public in a recorded interview earlier Saturday. During a security cabinet meeting later, he vowed to “exact an immense price from the enemy” and warned other Israeli foes in the region not to “mistakenly join this war.”

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The numbers of dead and captured, including reportedly women and children, sent shockwaves through the Israeli public—as did the Israeli intelligence’s failure to detect the attack in advance and the military’s inability to crush it quickly.

Hundreds of Hamas commandos crossed the heavily fortified border in pickup trucks and motorbikes, via motorized hang gliders, and from the Mediterranean shoreline, surprising Israeli forces. At least three Israeli military bases, including the Gaza Division headquarters, were attacked and overrun; videos from inside Gaza showed stolen jeeps being paraded through the streets to cheering crowds.

From early Saturday, images on social media showed heavily armed Palestinian militants inside at least a dozen communities in southern Israel, firing on civilians and security personnel. Israeli civilians, holed up in safe rooms, pleaded on live television and radio broadcasts and social media for security forces to save them from the militants, in some cases even as the gunmen were in their homes.

The timing and scale of the Hamas assault brought to mind the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the surprise attack by Egypt and Syria against Israel on the morning of Yom Kippur. This time, 50 years and a day to the anniversary of that war’s start, the assault coincided with a different Jewish holiday: the early morning hours of Simchat Torah. One Israeli military officer described the attack to Foreign Policy as a “combined offensive” on the part of Hamas.

“The way this morning began looks quite similar to what happened [in 1973]. Israel was completely surprised by a very well-coordinated attack by Hamas from Gaza,” retired Israel Defense Forces Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland told Foreign Policy. “This is a huge failure that should not have happened. Many explanations will be required later.”

Hamas officially termed the campaign “Al-Aqsa Storm,” in reference to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the third-holiest site in Islam. To Jews, it is known as the Temple Mount, the site of the biblical Jewish temple. Senior Hamas leaders listed a litany of Israeli aggressions at the site, which has seen visits by Israeli ultranationalists in recent days as part of the Jewish holidays—most of which passed without major incident. The group also cited rising Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank and growing mistreatment of Palestinian serving in Israeli jails.

But analysts said other factors accounted for the brazen attack.

“This is unlike anything we’ve seen in the last 20 years. This is a strategic shift [by Hamas] and a turning point,” said Ibrahim Dalalsha, the executive director of the Horizon Center, a Ramallah-based think tank. He cited the group’s financial difficulties governing the Gaza Strip, which it seized in 2007, as a factor. But more than anything, he said, the group was driven by the rising prospect of a U.S.-brokered normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

“Hamas likely feared it would be the big loser in it,” Dalalsha added. He said the group was angry at being ignored in the regional maneuvers and wants the plight of Palestinians in Gaza to be taken into account.

In a televised speech on Saturday, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, speaking to what he termed the “countries of normalization,” said that “the enemy will not provide you with security and protection. … The struggle will be determined in the field, by the blood of martyrs and heroism of the Palestinian people.” He also urged all Palestinians and Muslims, including outside of Israel, to join the fight.

“This is not the time to wait and watch, and it is not the time for victory with the heart only but rather with victory in action,” he said in a press statement earlier Saturday.

The concern among Israeli strategists is that this latest round of Israel-Gaza hostilities could spread to other fronts, especially Lebanon, where the powerful Hezbollah militant group has long-range missiles trained on Israel and its own elite commando force deployed on the border.

“We’re facing a very severe situation in the south, but it could deteriorate and turn into something much more comprehensive,” Eiland said, alluding to Lebanon.

The Israeli army officer said the military had been put on heightened alert in both the West Bank and the Israel-Lebanon border region. “We’re looking at the north and ramping up our defenses in all arenas,” he added.

The Hamas attack followed months of severe internal unrest in Israel, spurred by the far-right Netanyahu government’s push to overhaul the country’s judiciary. Israelis have staged mass demonstrations for 40 consecutive weeks, and thousands of Israeli military reservists have refused to be called up in protest against the government.

In the wake of Saturday’s events, the main reservist protest group announced that all its members would be returning to their units to fight. And all the opposition leaders issued a joint statement backing the security forces and adding that “in days like these, there is no opposition and no coalition in Israel.” Opposition leader Yair Lapid, after a meeting with Netanyahu, called for the immediate formation of an “emergency, narrow, professional unity government.”

Netanyahu “knows that with the current extreme and dysfunctional security cabinet, he can’t manage a war,” Lapid added.

Israeli officials have said the priority in the coming hours will be to reestablish control over all parts of the southern region, neutralize the remaining militants still inside Israeli territory, and then to go on the offensive. Analysts said Israel was expected to launch a major ground campaign deep into the coastal territory. Israel has engaged in numerous military operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip since 2009, but ground invasions have been rare and limited.

According to Dalalsha, there are an estimated 100,000 fighters from all the Palestinian militant factions, including Hamas, inside Gaza. A ground campaign against the groups would be long and bloody and full of risks—“not a matter of weeks or months.”

“Israel could collapse the Hamas government in the territory and reoccupy it. But how do you control it?” Dalalsha said.

For many people in Israel at the moment, those concerns seemed secondary to the security of residents along the border and the safe return of Israeli captives from Gaza.

“What we saw this morning is the beginning of a war between the State of Israel and the State of Gaza,” Eiland said. “We can expect a very massive Israeli retaliation.”

Update, Oct. 7, 2023: This story has been updated to include newly released numbers for Israeli dead and wounded.