One year after the Hamas terror – what is Netanyahu up to?

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Lerato Khumalo

One year after the terrible massacre, the Middle East is on the brink of a major war. What happens next?

“Unit 200” was there to sift through, sort and evaluate the abundant material from the surveillance cameras and listening devices in Gaza. A lot depended on her attention and clairvoyance, everyone in the Israeli secret service knew that.

On July 23, 2023, well before the massacre, a noncommissioned officer wrote a summary of what she had heard and seen. In it she mentioned that there were signs of preparations for an invasion. The harsh tone of the sermons in the mosques in Gaza also served as evidence of a sinister plan: Israel should “cause maximum suffering, spread horror and break the morals of the Jews.”

On September 19th, when there were still 18 days until the massacre, another report was available which revealed that an invasion was apparently being planned. It even said that 200 to 250 hostages were to be taken to the Gaza Strip.

They were young female soldiers who knew how to interpret what Hamas wanted. It was her superiors who did not trust her judgment because what was not allowed to be could not be. They collaborated in ignorance with the Netanyahu government, which was fixated on the West Bank. This allowed what the young women had warned about in vain to unfold.

The Hamas murderers came with field kitchens to feed themselves. Their commanders urged them not to waste bullets. They killed babies, castrated men, raped women, and set cars on fire at the Nova festival, burning alive the young people hiding in the trunk. The undertakers recommended that the bereaved bury the cars with the dead because this was the only way the souls fused with the steel could find peace.

Apparently there were documents in the underground tunnels that gave Hamas hope that Iran would intervene militarily if the Israeli army bombed and occupied Gaza as desired. Because Hamas was aiming for a major war that would finally bring Israel to its knees after so many failed attempts.

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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: Israel threatened Iran with a counterattack. (Source: IMAGO/Iranian Supreme Leader’S Office)

A year later, the region is actually closer to a major war than ever before. Only the Iranian Revolutionary Guards remain in the background as ever and send Hezbollah and Houthi rebels forward. The military initiative lies with humiliated Israel and not with the death mongers in Tehran. There are even some signals coming from there that indicate little interest in a big bang.

Because militarily, Israel is too strong for the mullahs, especially with the support of the USA, which, not coincidentally, is sending even more aircraft carriers and warships to this part of the world. The two rocket attacks at the end of April and the beginning of October came with an announcement and were intercepted by combined forces.

It is therefore possible that Israel will emerge stronger and Iran weakened from this explosive conflict, which began on October 7, 2023 with an orgy of blood and hostage-taking. That’s how it looks at the moment, but it doesn’t have to stay that way.

For Hamas, Iran did not go into the fire. For Hezbollah, it is more so because it is the extended arm of the regime in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria. But with the murder of the commanders, including spiritual leader Hassan Nasrallah, in just a few days, Israel showed a startling knowledge of the militia’s most secret inner workings. Hezbollah and Iran must first recover from this huge shock.

Israel is now fighting a two-front war. However, Gaza has become a secondary theater of war. Nobody probably knows exactly how many hostages are still alive somewhere in the labyrinth. For the Netanyahu government, their liberation was a short-term priority at best; now none at all. This disgrace will come to them.

As is so often the case, the Israeli army finds itself entangled in Lebanon – as it did in 1982, as it did in 2002, as it did in 2006. It may even succeed in permanently weakening Hezbollah. Perhaps in the end she will succeed in establishing the 30-kilometer zone up to the Litani River as a permanent buffer zone so that northern Israel can live more peacefully. And then?