Hamas Seeks to Spark Regional Conflict Against Israel: Expert

Rockets fired by Palestinian terrorists from Gaza City are intercepted by the Israeli Iron Dome defense missile system in the early hours of Oct. 8, 2023. Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images

The Hamas terrorist organization seeks to ignite an international conflict that will draw increased Islamist violence against Israel, according to one expert.

One of Hamas’ goals when it launched its largest-ever attack on Israel last week was to ensure a provocative response, said Joshua Krasna, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute think tank (FPRI).

“It is clear that one of Hamas’ goals in carrying out this outrage was to foment a wider regional conflict, was to bring Israel into such a reaction that then other actors, certainly Hezbollah and Iran, would be drawn in as well,” Mr. Krasna said during an Oct. 11 FPRI talk.

“But I think Israel also understands that it can’t necessarily be paralyzed by the possibility that this could become a wider conflict.”

Mr. Krasna said that the scope and severity of the crimes committed by Hamas in Israel last week ensured that Israel must respond in a previously unimaginable way. To do otherwise, he said, would invite Israel’s destruction through sustained insurgency.

“...A Hamas state on our borders is no longer viable. That reality can’t exist,” Mr. Krasna said.

“A threat like this to your population has to be removed.”

Most Deadly Attack on Jews Since the Holocaust

The Hamas terror group launched an unprecedented attack on Israel last week. Islamist terrorists murdered more than 1,000 Israelis, abducted women and children, and engaged in acts of rape and torture on a massive scale.

The assault was the single most deadly targeted attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

In response, Mr. Krasna said that an overwhelming response to destroy Hamas’ ability to launch another attack from Gaza would likely drive Israeli leadership for the foreseeable future.

“I think a lot of us had forgotten how thin is the membrane that separates us from catastrophe,” Mr. Krasna said.

Israel is now operating under a temporary emergency government, the first of its kind since 1967. The last was established during the war that saw Israel seize Gaza from Egypt to begin with.

Mr. Krasna expressed doubt that the emergency government would last long, but said the scale of the violence was difficult to process and had fostered a unity of purpose in Israel unknown in generations.

The carnage resulted in a third as many deaths as the United States suffered on 9/11. Israel’s population is less than three percent that of the United States, however. As such, there is no family in Israel, Mr. Krasna said, that had not been directly affected or else know someone who was.

‘There is Going to be Suffering’

The likelihood of a significant military action on the ground in Gaza has raised concerns throughout the international community of what sort of collateral damage Israel’s response may give rise to.

Mr. Krasna noted that it was Hamas, not Israel, which subjected Gaza to rampant terror and now military action. Despite popular reactionary slogans to the contrary, he said, the Gaza Strip has not been subject to any Israeli occupation for nearly two decades.

“Israel has not been occupying Gaza since 2005,” Mr. Krasna said, referencing when the nation pulled its last civilian and military settlements from the region.

“For the past 16 years…, Gaza has been ruled by Hamas, who took over in a violent coup.”

With that being said, he added that Israel was cognizant of international fears about harm to civilians in Gaza.

“I don’t think Israel wants there to be a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but I think that the nature of the enemy that we are facing is going to cause suffering among people who are non-combatants.”

The problem, he said, was that Hamas made a deliberate attempt to hide amongst the most vulnerable in Gaza, thus ensuring that Israel could not retaliate without harm befalling innocent people.

The inevitable retaliation from Israel, he said, will therefore be difficult.

“The problem is, while we try to limit to a minimum the suffering on the other side, our enemy is embedded in a civilian population,” Mr. Krasna said.

“There is going to be suffering.”