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Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
Hamas’ Attack on Israel Is Puzzling
Hamas’ Attack on Israel Is Puzzling
Paul Craig Roberts
I am being asked about the Israeli-Palestine conflict, which seems to be taking attention away from the Ukraine-Russia conflict. People, by which I mean people who pay attention, are wondering why the Palestinians would attack Israel like this as it provides Netanyahu with an excuse to grab the remaining bits of Palestine and destroy the Gaza strip, thus disposing of the two-state solution by conquest. Who can blame Israel after Palestinians killed Israelis and took hostages?
I have heard the official explanation of Palestinian perfidy, but I don’t have an explanation for the attack. It seems it would have to be more than perfidy. I do agree with readers that it seems a curious thing for Hamas to do as it plays into Israel’s hands. I also agree that there is something else strange about the attack. How did drones and so many rockets, allegedly from Iran, and some say Ukraine, get into the Gaza strip, and how did the Hamas attackers get into Israel?
The Hamas attack has something of 9/11’s flavor. Just as every aspect of the US National Security State failed simultaneously on September 11, 2001, Israel’s security system, including the Iron Dome the US constructed for Israel, simultaneously failed. Mysteriously, the Hamas fighters entered Israel on the ground and through the air and on the sea without being detected. Mysteriously, large quantities of weapons entered Palestine through Israel without being detected. This is too much convenient failure to be believable. It will be interesting to see if anyone in Israel is held accountable for the total security failure. In the US no one was held accountable for the security failures on September 11, which should have told us a lot.
Not knowing, we can but speculate. We have a motive. Israel can now steal the rest of Palestine. Another motive might be that Israel can expand the conflict into a wider war and succeed this time in grabbing the water resources of southern Lebanon. It could even get nastier with Israeli moves against Syria and Iran. Oil prices could go sky high causing world disruption. A victorious war and the end of the Palestinian problem would free Netanyahu from his legal and political problems. There is a lot to think about.
But let’s move on to the security failure that made the attack possible. Why would Netanyahu enable Hamas to attack Israel by standing down Israel security? It seems a nonsensical suggestion, but isn’t as it creates the conditions in which Israel can absorb all that remains of Palestine, just as 9/11 created the conditions for the neoconservatives to launch the wars they had planned in the Middle East.
The difficult question is why would the Palestinians bring on their own destruction by attacking Israel when Hamas has no prospect of defeating Israel? Again, we can only speculate. It could be an Israeli operation from start to finish. Israel infiltrates Hamas, just as the FBI infiltrates Trump supporters and patriotic groups now called domestic terrorists. The Israeli agents play up Israel’s abuse of the Palestinians. Netanyahu helps them along by blowing up the sacred Mosque. The agents come up with an attack plan made possible with weapons from Iran and devices from Iran to jam Israeli security. They go about this carefully, relying on the decades of anger and hurt and the prospect of release from impotence to crowd out Hamas’ reason.
I don’t say these speculations suffice as the explanation. But I would not be surprised if these speculations, if investigated, would prove to be closer to the truth than whatever official narrative emerges.