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Source: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/hamass-strategic-trap/
Hamas Unleashed Consequences It Could Not Control
(Times of Israel) Dr. Ofer Israeli - Hamas succeeded in shocking Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, but shock is not the same as victory. Hamas sought to show that Gaza could not be ignored and that Israeli deterrence was brittle. Hamas-led militants breached Israel's border defenses, killed 1,200 people, and abducted 251 Israelis and foreign nationals, forcing Israel, the U.S., Arab states, and international institutions to reorder their priorities around Gaza. But this disruption opened a wider field of counteraction, adaptation, and cascading consequences that became a struggle over Hamas's survival. The consequences for Hamas have been enormous: degraded military infrastructure, disrupted command networks, the killing of commanders, exposed tunnels, weakened governance, and growing diplomatic pressure to remove Hamas from Gaza's future security and political arrangements. Hamas sought to break Israel's deterrence model, and it did. Yet in doing so, it shifted the debate to whether Hamas could retain military power, govern Gaza, or take part in any postwar order. Hamas's own action converted a managed conflict into a direct challenge to its continued authority. Hamas did force the Palestinian question back onto the global agenda. Yet the price has been catastrophic. Gaza has endured immense destruction, mass displacement, humanitarian collapse, and social exhaustion. Hamas may have restored visibility to the Palestinian issue, but it did so while devastating the Palestinian arena.