When on October 7 last year, Hamas struck Israel with a surprise attack, the Jewish state was gripped with fear and panic because after years of strikes against the people of Gaza, it was expected that the regime of Benjamin Netanyahu would be unable to proceed with its one-sided deterrence. Now, Hamas has tried to convey to the world that its deterrent posture against Israel will work and the Jewish state will be unable to deter Palestinians with brutal attacks.
Deterrence is a concept that tends to create fear in the minds of the adversary about an unacceptable level of damage in case it carries out its belligerent acts. It is a combination of three Cs: capability, credibility and communication. In case of Israel and Hamas, deterrence only works unilaterally as Palestinians were unable to effectively retaliate when the Jewish state carried out lethal attacks against unarmed Gaza. In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza but continued to besiege the Palestinian enclave from land, sea and air. Holed up in a few hundred kilometers of land, around 2.3 million Palestinians lived a miserable life in starvation and deprivation of basic necessities.
For Hamas, October 7 was a defining moment when it tried to demonstrate its power and deter Israel by launching coordinated land, sea and air attacks on southern Israel killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages. The initial impact of the attacks reflected an element of surprise, but within hours, Netanyahu’s regime was able to seize the initiative from Hamas and carried deadly attacks on Gaza.
Why did Hamas fail to match Israeli deterrence with its own and how did it........