This week we talk about the Gaza Strip, the Yom Kippur War, and Egypt.
We also discuss 9/11, charged topics, and sneak-attacks.
Recommended Book: Pinpoint by Greg Milner
Transcript
In 1972, the Egyptian military started building up its offense-capable forces, buying things like MiG fighter jets and T-62 tanks from the Soviet Union, while also gutting its swathe of generals—many of whom attained the rank for political, not experiential reasons—replacing them with more capable versions of the same.
This buildup and swap-out of leadership was being conducted in the lead-up to an invasion of Israel, with the intention of reclaiming territory that Egypt lost during the Six-Day War in 1967: a conflict that saw Egypt, Syria, and Jordan all going to war with Israel, mostly because of the simmering bad relations Israel had had with all its Arab neighbors since the First Arab-Israeli War, which ended in 1949, but the catalyst for that conflict was Egypt threatening to close the Suez Canal and Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping; something that would be devastating to Israel's economy, and which the Israeli government had previously said would serve as a casus belli—a justification for war—and which was already the casus belli for the aforementioned First Arab-Israeli War.
So the same general ingredients that led to the First Arab-Israeli War in the mid-20th century were in place again in the late-60s: strained relations between Israel and its neighbors, one of those neighbors threatening to clobber the Israeli economy by denying them the use of the Suez Canal and Straits of Tiran for shipping exports, and though the second time around the Egyptian military was pulled back into a defensive position after announcing that ban on Israeli shipping using these water channels, the Israeli military preemptively struck Egyptian forces and launched a ground offensive into Egypt that ended less than a week later.
This conflict left tens of thousands of Arab soldiers from these three countries dead, while Israel only suffered about a thousand fatalities.
The Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian governments gave up territory to Israel as part of the ceasefire following this relatively brief war, and the territory Egypt gave up—the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, which it had been occupying, directly informed that 1972 buildup of Egyptian forces and recalibration of their military leadership.
Throughout that buildup and booting of generals, though, the Egyptian government tried to get Israel to accept a deal that would involve them giving the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt in exchange for the Egyptian government formally recognizing Israel's rights as an independent state—something none of its Arab neighbors were willing to do, which perhaps understandably had been an ongoing source of tension in the region.
Everyone, including Israel's most powerful ally, the US, were keen on this agreement, but the Israeli government said no, as the deal wouldn't guarantee their protection from Egypt in the future.
This pissed off a lot of those allies, and the Egyptian government continued to float the idea right up to the moment they attacked Israel in 1973—an attack that was anticipated by essentially everyone, including the Israeli government, because it had become well-understood that the Egyptian government, for reasons both economic and governmental, wouldn't really be able to survive as an independent state without the Sinai territory that was now under Israel's control.
Egypt conducted a bunch of military exercises between May and August of that year, which is why similar exercises, right next to the Suez Canal in late September, were ignored by many in the Israeli establishment as just more exercises, nothing to worry about.
And tens of thousands of the soldiers participating in those exercises were given permission to make their pilgrimage to Mecca a few days before the attack, which reinforced the idea that this was just more posturing on the part of Egypt—and that proved convincing, even though the Israelis received eleven warnings of an impending attack from well-placed sources.
The Israeli government finally scrambled to call up reservists a handful of hours before Egypt moved in, though, and despite being in the position to make a preemptive strike, they were dissuaded from doing so by US leadership, which told them they should do everything they could to avoid being the one to start a new war in the Middle East, also saying that if they did start something, they wouldn't receive any support from the US; the Soviet Union, for their part, made similar efforts to dissuade the Egyptians from starting a new conflict, but to no avail.
What became known, in Israel at least, as the Yom Kippur War, because it began on that holy Jewish holiday, ultimately lasted just shy of three weeks; it saw successful Israeli counterattacks into Syria and Egypt, eventually led to the beginnings of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and importantly, led to the 1978 return of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt as a consequence of the Camp David Accords, which also led to the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty—which included Egypt's acknowledgment of Israel as a legitimate nation that should be allowed to exist.
One defining trait of the Yom Kippur War, though, which has remained locked into the collective psyche of the Israeli military establishment in the decades since, was the surprise-attack nature of the conflict, and how Egypt, alongside Syria and Jordan, all hit Israel at a moment in which they weren't fully prepared, and when they had many reasons to believe an attack wouldn't be forthcoming.
What I'd like to talk about today is a more recent attack on Israel that many are comparing to the outset of Yom Kippur war, what we know so far about the conflict and the intentions of those involved, and what might happen next.
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This is an incredibly fast-moving and emotion-evoking story, so there's a very good chance some component of what I'm about to tell you will have changed before this episode goes live, and that a lot of conversation about it, in personal and broadcast contexts, will be fraught.
But that said, what we seem to know at the moment is this:
Early on the morning of October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a sneak-attack against Israel.
Hamas, which is more formally called the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas is an acronym for that name in Arabic, is an organization that governs the Gaza Strip, and has since 2007, when they took control of the region, capturing it, basically, following a five-day conflict with the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, or Fatah—there were elections in the area before that, but since then it's mostly just been Hamas running things, and they have influence in the West Bank—another area within Israel designated for Palestinians, though separated from Gaza by Israeli cities and security infrastructure—as well.
This sneak-attack was, by all indications, almost entirely unexpected and came as a surprise to Israel's military complex, alongside that of allied nations, like the US and European countries; there have been murmurings, as tends to be the case after these sorts of attacks, that some people did know or suspect what was about to happen, it's just that those suspicions were't taken as seriously as they could have, and in retrospect, should have, been.
But this attack caught the Israeli government more or less completely unprepared, and it was fairly complex, involving attacks from the land, the sea, and the air, the latter accomplished using thousands of rockets fired within hours of each other, but also motorized paraglider that allowed fighters to quickly get behind defensive lines, allowing them to secure bases and checkpoints, which in turn allowed more heavily armed commando units to break through the usually well-defended walls and fences guarded by Israeli soldiers, and to then sweep through neighboring areas, killing and capturing as they went.
The killing and capturing was quite brutal: this wasn't a firefight between soldiers, it was largely a wave of well-prepared Hamas fighters rolling through a relatively small number of soldiers, and then butchering, torturing, raping, and kidnapping civilians of all ages.
Current estimates suggest that Hamas militants have killed more than 1,300 people, so far, including people of many different nationalities, but mostly Israeli citizens, and they've wounded several thousand more—primarily during this initial, stealthy attack, which some Israeli higher-ups have called their country's 9/11, because of how out of nowhere it seemed, and how many civilian lives were claimed.
Israel's government officially declared war on Hamas the following day, and have since killed nearly 3,000 people, and wounded at least 9,600 more, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—most of those deaths and injuries the consequence of Israeli counterstrikes, which have until now mostly been in the shape of missiles fired into Gaza.
That "until now" caveat is important, as, as of the day I'm recording this, the day before this episode goes live, the Israeli government has indicated it intends to invade Gaza, beginning in the more-populated northern portion of the Strip, and it reinforced this intention by telling Palestinians in Gaza, via the UN, that they had 24 hours to evacuate to the southern portion of the Strip.
Such an evacuation is easier said than done, though, as more than 1.1 million people live in the area the Israelis were suggesting people should leave, or else, so the Israeli government has gotten pushback from international organizations, as there's no way that many people can safely move that far in that short a period of time, which means Israel risks losing the moral high ground, seeming not to care what happens to everyday Palestinian civilians, despite gesturing at giving them the option of getting out of harm's way before the hammer comes down, Israeli soldiers flooding into the area intent on hunting down Hamas' leadership and collapsing every last bit of their military infrastructure.
And that dynamic, of Israel being just incredibly overpowered compared to Hamas, and using that power against everyday Palestinian civilians, is part of why some outside analysts have suggested the 9/11 comparison is apt; not just because of how the attack happened and who the primary victims were, but because Israel's response, so far at least, has been similar to that of the United States following 9/11: namely, a lot of international support wavers because, back in the day, the US government scrambled to find someone to blame and ended up hurting a lot of innocent people alongside those who were substantially less innocent, and because now, Israel might be readying itself to do the same, everyone feeling really bad for them and what they have suffered, but increasingly wondering if the victim might be setting themselves up to become an even greater victimizer—lashing out as a result of that pain and horror and desperate need to feel some semblance of security and safety again.
As was the case back in 2001, there are many valid perspectives on this, and folks around the world have responded to what's happening in Israel and Gaza in a variety of ways.
Some people, those on what we might call the pro-Israeli side, have argued that Israel was attacked, out of nowhere, a huge number of civilians were killed, other civilians—something like 200 of them—were taken hostage, and this is very not okay, and Israel is well within its rights to hit back at those who hit them first, and to do what they need to do to ensure those who did the initial hitting are not in a position to do so again in the future, even if that means some innocent people are caught in the crossfire.
Others, those on what we might call the pro-Palestine side, have argued that millions of Palestinians have been essentially kept in an open-air prison for almost two decades, and thus it's understandable that they might do whatever they can—or support organizations that will do whatever they can—to hit back at the force, the Israeli government, that came in and took their land, locked them up, and who have trampled their human rights in all sorts of internationally acknowledged ways.
It's also worth noting here that there are plenty of Palestinians who don't like Hamas, and/or who don't agree with what they did in this instance, or with other attacks they've made against other Palestinian groups and Israelis over the years; there are likewise plenty of Israelis who don't agree with the militarization that has occurred under the current, and other recent Israeli administrations.
And it's possible, I think, to acknowledge that it's civilians on both sides that are suffering the most from these attacks, recent and historical, while those at the top often use them as an excuse to continue inciting and justifying violence of all sorts, while reinforcing their own hold and garnering more power for themselves—and can be true of attacks that look a lot like terrorism, and those that are easier to justify in the eyes of the international community.
So there are people on all sides of this, there are uncomfortable discussions happening all around the world, centering on this subject, but the concrete reality on the ground is that Hamas scored a brutal military strike against the much larger and more powerful Israel, Israel is now leveraging that power to hit the residents of the Gaza Strip, including Hamas, hard, and we're all waiting to see how far this will go, and what the broader consequences will be.
Because as horrible as that initial attack was, and as horrible as Israel's counterattack has been, the real fear for many is that this conflict will expand to encompass more players, regional and international.
The most likely entrants would be those that have been involved in previous attacks against Israel, like Egypt and Lebanon and Syria, and while Egypt seems not keen on the idea right now, mostly trying to play peacemaker and trying to keep a flood of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from fleeing Gaza into their territory, Lebanon has been a bit more fuzzy on the matter: there have been reports of mortar attacks across the border, and some reporters have suggested that the level of attacks are higher than usual, maybe indicating that Hezbollah, which is a major political and military force in Lebanon, could get directly involved in the conflict, seeing it as an opportunity to hit Israel when they're wounded and when their forces and attentions are divided—though it could also be a matter of Hezbollah wanting to pull some of Israel's resources north, which would make their work in Gaza a lot more cumbersome.
That would potentially be doubly-bad, too, because Hezbollah is backed by Iran, which has made no secret of its desire to see Israel wiped off the map, and which is the major force many people on the Israeli side, and on the side of simply not wanting to see the war expand, are worried might decide to get involved, as that would mean a whole nationstate getting its country-scale military involved in the fight, which would substantially complicate things, not to mention seriously raising the potential of a huge body count and a spiral into WWIII.
The Iranian government has said it won't engage militarily with Israel unless Israelis attack them, so that concern would seem to be less pressing at the moment, though it's hard to predict, early on in a conflict, how such statements will age as realities on the ground change, and Iranian officials have made other statements that suggest they're keeping their options open.
There are more distant concerns that the US or Russia or China might get involved, and it seems unlikely that any of those bigger, global players would step in directly at this point, though a huge number of countries have announced military and humanitarian support for Israel, and a few have done the same for the Palestinians, as well; so that's better in some ways, as it reduces the chances of those bigger players coming into direct conflict with each other, but less-good in the sense that it raises the possibility of this turning into a proxy conflict, which could then spin-up into something pretty big, for better and for worse, if things at some point escalate.
Looking further afield, there are concerns within Ukraine that this conflict could pull attention and resources away from Kyiv, redistributing them to Israel, or maybe even just wearing people out on the idea of throwing resources at international conflicts—democratic support for such aid drying up as people start to wonder how much money will be spent and how many of these things we'll see popping up in the coming years.
We're not far enough along to know if that's likely to be the case or not, but it's enough of a concern that Ukrainian President Zelensky has been going out of his way to announce support for Israel, even asking to visit the country, personally, in order to stay front of mind and possibly to build a connection in the eyes of the world between the two conflicts.
One other big development is a pause on efforts by the Israeli and Saudi governments to normalize their relations with each other; this has been a huge, long-term diplomatic effort that could help the Middle East stabilize a bit, and could help the region better interconnect economically and diplomatically, but the Saudi government said they were back-burnering the agreement while Israel is attacking Gaza, and it's anyone's guess as to whether they'll start that back up, and if so, when.
Something else we don't know is Hamas's motive for this attack.
Some speculate that it might be as simple as wanting to hurt a longtime enemy, while others have suggested it might be the lead-in to some other kind of attack: an attritional, weakening blow meant to soften Israel up for an invasion from the north, or an attack from Iran.
Still others contend that it was probably a means of derailing the aforementioned normalizing of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia—something Hamas would be keen to prevent, and which they may have predicted this sort of attack and Israel's inevitable response to it, would hamstring.
Wilder speculations, for which there's no evidence, as far as I'm aware, suggests that this might be a five-dimensional chess ploy by Russian President Putin, since Putin met with Hamas leaders who traveled to Moscow for the visit in March of 2023, and the group's politburo leader visited Moscow again in early September.
The theory is that Putin wanted to pull international attention and support away from Ukraine, while also punishing Israel for supporting Ukraine, and he did so by either supporting Hamas directly, or via Russia's ally, Iran—and while it has been confirmed that Iran helped Hamas prepare for this attack, there's no confirmation that Russia had anything to do with it; this, and several other pieces of evidence pointing in this direction, so far at least, are all circumstantial.
This gestures at the broader problem right now, though, of trying to understand and contextualize something so horrific, because lacking that deeper understanding, it's difficult to know what will help, what will make things better in a region in which all the variables seem to be set up in such a way that things just get worse and more volatile over time, rather than the opposite, and what will be the consequences of the, as of the day I'm recording this, ongoing counterattack by Israel, and the exploding humanitarian situation that's arising in Gaza as a consequence of that counterattack.
Show Notes
* https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-israel-was-duped-hamas-planned-devastating-assault-2023-10-08/
* https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1711027540536471994
* https://www.vox.com/world-politics/23910641/israel-hamas-war-gaza-palestine-explainer
* Depressing Take on the Conflict
* https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/israel-hamas-gaza
* https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/israel-hamas-war-gaza-strip/
* https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/how-israel-was-duped-hamas-planned-devastating-assault-2023-10-08/
* https://www.axios.com/2023/10/11/zelensky-israel-hamas-war-gaza-visit-netanyahu
* https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/10/13/palestinians-flee-their-homes-towards-southern-gaza-after-israeli-order
* https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-hamas-war-refugees-6cf0ff04e513ecec12cf9152656ac1b6
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bank
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_enclaves
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_National_Authority
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatah%E2%80%93Hamas_conflict
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas
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