Hamas succeeded in shocking Israel. But shock is not the same as strategic control.

The October 7 attack was designed to rupture an emerging regional and political equilibrium. Before that day, Israel’s working assumption was that Gaza could be contained, Hamas deterred, and regional normalization advanced without restoring the Palestinian question to the center of Middle Eastern diplomacy. A possible Israel–Saudi–U.S. arrangement threatened to marginalize Hamas strategically: Gaza would remain isolated, the Palestinian issue would be managed rather than resolved, and Arab normalization with Israel might proceed without Hamas’s consent.

In that narrow sense, Hamas achieved its immediate objective. Hamas-led attackers breached Israel’s border defenses, killed about 1,200 people, abducted 251 hostages, momentarily disoriented Israeli command and intelligence systems, and shattered the public perception that Israel had successfully........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)