I have written, in earlier blogs, about Hamas’ goal and strategy: the destruction of the State of Israel though global outrage against Israel . To reiterate a bit:
First, the October 7 incursion into Israel was not designed to topple Israel in one fell swoop. Rather, it was to provoke Israel into a blind rage of destruction that would create a global outrage and a desire from neighboring countries to attack Israel. They knew very well that the United Nations would ring with cries of ‘disproportionate response’ after Israel laid waste large areas of Gaza.
(I’m old enough that Gaza’s daily TV announcement of the number of Gazans killed reminds me of the US ‘body count’ back in the days of the Vietnam War. For Hamas, the death toll, almost certainly grossly inflated, keeps reminding the world every day of how horrible Israel is.)
Secondly, Hamas used hospitals and schools for their military operations. They dared Israel to attack those hospitals, and Israel obliged. Now, the UN rang with cries of ‘targeting civilians’ and ‘genocide’. Hamas’ goal was to provoke such outrage that Iran, Lebanon, and the West Bank would be drawn into an all-out assault on Israel.
It wasn’t working, although there were signs that it might work when Iran sent hundreds of missiles towards Israel, but it stopped there. Gaza body counts and horror stories have become a boring, repetitive story that doesn’t make the front pages anymore. Time for a new outrage.
So Hamas’ next step was to publicly and conspicuously station its leaders in Iran and Lebanon, just daring Netanyahu to go after them. Again, he obliged by assassinating the leaders on foreign soil. Once again, Hamas is hoping that this outrage will provoke Iran and Hezbollah to launch an all-out war. It might just work this time.
“Hang on!”, I hear you cry. “First you claim that Hamas leaders were sacrificing thousands of innocent civilians just to create outrage, and now you claim that the Hamas leaders were sacrificing themselves? Ridiculous!” UNLESS….
What if political enemies within Hamas sent those leaders to places where they could be targeted by Israel? How about Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the October incursion, who has now been elevated to be the head of Hamas? Or to go even further down the rabbit hole, suppose those enemies secretly informed Israel just where and when those leaders would be easy targets. A power-hungry Sinwar, or whoever it was, killed two birds with one stone — not just eliminating the two leaders, but also perpetuating the strategy of outrage, to provoke Lebanon and Iran into total war against Israel.
We’ll see how this all plays out in the next few days, as Iran and Hezbollah plot their likely attacks on Israel.