Strategic Failure, Future Prospects

"The Iranian plan was a barrage to destroy Israel within a week."

"[Infighting and mass demonstrations in Israel] destroyed the image of Israel as a powerful country [to its neighbours]."

"It inflated the Jihad glands in the bodies of our neighbours. They went out in the streets to celebrate. 'No fighters, no pilots'!"

"It encouraged them to start the war."

"The tantrum over civilians killed is for the foreign media. It's good PR."

"A Palestinian state with all of the clans together would fail because it's the same disease as Syria."

"In terms of Palestinians, if you tell me their last name I'll tell  you where they live, because they live in compounds, or you might say a community."

"The word in ancient Arabic for clan and neighbourhood are homonyms. If you moved across the street to another clan, it would be like you were exiled. Clans don't intermarry."

Dr. Mordechai Kedar, Israeli Middle East Scholar

“The Iranian plan was a barrage to destroy Israel within a week.” Middle East scholar Dr. Mordechai Kedar speaks at an event in Toronto, on June 25, 2024. Photo by Dave Gordon for the National Post

 

Dr. Kedar is a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, an expert on Islamist groups and Middle East affairs, vice-president of Newsrael's Middle East affairs news site. His academic studies and experiences equip him with special insider views of the Middle East, Israel and Palestinians equal to none. He served in the Israel Defense Forces intelligence for 25 years, specializing in Arab political discourse and media and Islamic groups. His specialty in the media is providing analyses and commentary on affairs in the Middle East.

And his interpretation of recent events is that Hamas leaders took an initiative whose purpose and shock value  undermined a scheme by the Islamic Republic of Iran to mount a mass attack against Israel from Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Gaza that would result in tens of thousands of missiles lobbed into the Jewish State, with combat units from Syria, Yemen, Iraq sending missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles while Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad did their part, firing missiles in such numbers as to completely overwhelm Israel's Iron Dome.

Destruction in the Jewish state was meant to be complete and irrevocable; roads, electricity, communications systems, army bases, airports completely destroyed in a doomsday scenario that was planned but aborted, thanks to Hamas's precipitate action that unravelled the larger, more methodical and existentially devastating plans of their Islamist Shiite patron. The long-planned Hamas invasion proved irresistible to the terrorist group, evidently unwilling to await the order from Iran for a coordinated attack.

They were inspired by the boycott of training by 200 Israeli F-15 pilots protesting proposed judicial reforms in March of 2023. Infighting and mass demonstrations that "destroyed the image of Israel as a powerful country" with an indefatigable, precision-trained and primed-for-victory military. That fissure in Israeli society signalled weakness to Hamas leaders, eager to take advantage of what they saw as an opportunity to unilaterally destroy Israeli morale, resolve and effectiveness.

 

Video grab of an armed Hamas terrorist walks around the Supernova music festival, near Kibbutz Reim in southern Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo by AFP via Getty Images

The Nova Music Festival was an event that hosted hordes of young Israelis, a ripe platform for a mass slaughter and group rape scenario, proving irresistible to the leadership which planned to unleash the command performance for which Hamas operatives had undergone training rehearsals for months to fulfill at last the guiding principle of their charter to destroy Israel and murder its Jewish population. The impending agreement between  Israel and Saudi Arabia for 'normalization' impelled Hamas in its decision, as well.

Dr. Kedar envisioned a domino effect of peace agreements where Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Tunisia, Mali, Chad and Niger would have been amenable to joining the Abrahamic Accords for what such an alliance would promise to their economic development and relations with the United States: "Mainly because of the American goodies".

 

A parade for the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s militant arm, is held in Gaza. Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

 

Such accommodation with Israel by Muslim states would have the effect of sidelining the cause of the Palestinians and as such would have been completely untenable, hastening the Hamas decision-making. Aside from which there was the anticipation that hundreds of Israelis taken hostage would be exchanged for infinitely greater numbers of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. The aftermath of the October 7 atrocities appear to have been of little immediate concern in the lead-up to the Hamas invasion of southern Israel.

The Qur'an, Dr. Kedar reminded his Toronto audience -- attending the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation Toronto Zionist Council and Canadians for Israel's Legal Rights -- teaches the faithful of the praiseworthiness of dying for Israel. Dr. Kedar has arrived at what he feels is a solution to the conundrum -- what to do with the Palestinian Territories following the completion of the war. His proposal is that Gaza and the Palestinian Authority be split along clan lines; each to be administered by their own communities.

Clans are embedded into Arab culture and conflict between clans is endemic to the culture. "It fits the culture of the Middle East, because it fits the clan mentality", he states, as geographic splits by clan communities would have the effect of averting conflicts between other clans and by extension, Israel. Failing Arab states such as Syria, Libya, Lebanon Iraq, and Iran host various clans who clamour for their equal rights. Successful states such as Qatar, the Emirates, Kuwait, have economic stability,  safety, law and order. And they are operated by clans. 

"Every clan sees the other clan as the enemy because they are 'not from us'." Prejudice and discrimination is regionally rampant. Gaza has been split into five administrative districts for the past eight decades. Without much clan overlap, Dr. Kedar's vision is to allow Gazan clans to operate their own affairs. "This could very well work with no Hamas, which no one wants. Otherwise a Palestinian state could very well turn into another Hamastan."

 

Mordechai Kedar on the Return of Terrorism in the West Bank