Why Did Hamas Go All-In?

*This article was originally published in Hebrew

Israel is at war. The time for investigating the events with which it started will come. Tough questions will need to be answered: Where was the intelligence warning and why was Israel not prepared to defend its people? But no less important, Israel must determine how the security establishment did not notice in time that Hamas made the strategic decision to pivot from repeated rounds of attrition to going for broke.

Since Operation Protective Edge in 2014, in the many rounds of friction in Gaza, Hamas’ strategy has been to take shots at Israel, wear down Israel’s home front, and reach a ceasefire that strengthens its power in Gaza. Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021 was the most recent round of fighting with Hamas, which ended with Hamas incurring considerable damage to its military capabilities, but also heartened that it could strike deeply into the Israeli home front and open new theaters within Israel.

Throughout all these rounds of violence, the policy of successive Israeli governments was to strengthen the country’s defensive capabilities, to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Gaza, and to avoid an all-out war with Hamas. Not one of the governments or defense establishment leaders were under the illusion that such a policy would solve the problem of Hamas. In many cabinet discussions that I participated in over the years, and those that I led as National Security Advisor, it was clear that this policy kept Hamas in place as the ruler of Gaza with the goal of reducing the group’s ability to harm Israeli civilians (Iron-Dome, the fence, shelters etc.), and enabled Israel to focus on greater threats—specifically Iran and the northern theater of conflict.

The assessment of the political and military leadership throughout these years was that ultimately Hamas would not be satisfied with limited gains. It would, at some point, try to launch a large-scale operation, as it tried to do during operation Guardian of the Walls. At the same time, Israel understood that an operation to fully dismantle Hamas’ military infrastructure and remove the threat to the home front would require a ground invasion that would inflict high casualties on our forces.

After what Israelis are now calling Black Sabbath, it is clear that Hamas changed its strategy. It decided to use all means at its disposal to massacre and kidnap the greatest number of Israeli citizens that it could, taking into account the fact that after such an action, it would be at the receiving end of a response that it never experienced before. Hamas went all in on October 7, abandoning its role as the government responsible for the Palestinian population in Gaza, and instead sparking a war that will almost certainly lead to the end of its rule.

Why did Hamas do this? From their own point of view, business as usual may have been worse than setting fire to the region, and they clearly thought they would suffer from the end results of the normalization process that was moving ahead with Saudi Arabia. Iran took drastic measures to stymie this process, and using Hamas for this purpose obviated the need to activate its more valuable proxy, Hezbollah. There is a real chance that Iran decided to use Hamas, even at the risk of seeing its Gaza proxy dismantled, while reserving the option to throw Hezbollah into the fray at a future time.

Yet, there was an additional component that changed the picture for Hamas: the realization that Israel was weaker – and this afforded an opportunity for the element of surprise. Hamas estimated (unfortunately correctly) that in its current state of domestic turmoil, Israel would not be at full vigilance or operational readiness. It might also have thought that the Israeli government, as the country convulsed from the fighting over the judicial reform, was unable to respond with full force. The group may have thought it could achieve an unprecedented win without risking its dismantling.

What now? Hamas clearly chose a brutal and unprecedented rampage, and now the Israeli government needs to respond. What we were used to seeing in previous rounds of fighting is not compatible with the current reality. The Israeli government must take decisive action. It has no choice. This war must end with the dismantling of Hamas, with the return of the hostages, and with the establishment of a different civilian Palestinian government in Gaza. After its murderous operation, Hamas lost some of the international backing that it had enjoyed. Even the Arab world understands that Hamas remaining in power in Gaza constitutes a precedent that endangers the stability of the rest of the region.

The IDF must act against the Hamas leadership, its military and governmental infrastructure, and to prepare for the possibility that Hezbollah will join the battle. At the same time, Israel must get the international community and the Arab world to accept an alternative that can administer Gaza in Hamas’s place.

Dr. Eyal Hulata is Israel’s former National Security Advisor and head of the National Security Council.  He is currently a senior international fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.