President Biden responded with appropriately strong condemnation of Hamas’s terrorist attack, which included indiscriminate rocket barrages on civilian areas in major cities and the seizures of both military outposts and small towns. Mr. Biden offered equally unequivocal U.S. support to Israel: “The United States stands with the state of Israel … full stop,” he said in remarks Saturday. “There is never a justification for terrorist attacks,” the president said, an allusion to the legitimate Palestinian grievances that Hamas is exploiting.
Terrifying as it is, Hamas’s strike is also clarifying. Yes, Israel has powerful enemies, out to destroy it; we now know this particular one had not been as effectively deterred as the Israeli security establishment believed. It had evidently been biding its time, arming and preparing for an operation whose size and complexity bespeak many months of planning and outside assistance, undoubtedly from Iran, which hailed the attacks.
We now know just how audaciously Iran and its proxies might act to preempt negotiations between the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel that could result in mutual recognition between the latter two — and heightened U.S. support for Riyadh, including a civilian nuclear capability. A statement by Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Iran’s ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah, seemed to threaten not only Saudi Arabia but also the six other Arab governments that have relations with Israel. He warned that Hamas’s strike “sends a message to the Arab and Islamic world, and the international community as a whole, especially those seeking normalization with this enemy, that the Palestinian cause is an everlasting one, alive until victory and liberation.” One Hamas leader said “It is possible that the battle would involve regional parties.”
We now know that Israel’s own internal divisions, sparked by the extreme right-wing parties in Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition, and by his plan to overhaul the nation’s judiciary along lines favored by those radical forces, created an opportunity for the country’s enemies. Early signs are that Israel’s leading politicians are putting aside their differences with Mr. Netanyahu to meet the emergency. We can only hope that is the beginning of a new coalition that can exclude the extremists who pushed the judicial overhaul.
Yet the future shape of Israel’s government is one of the issues that the new war leaves less clear, at least for now. Other questions include whether Saudi-Israeli diplomacy can survive this shock; how widely beyond Israel and Gaza the fighting might spread; the potential impact on the global economy if oil prices spike; and whether any hope of compromise between Israel and the Palestinians could somehow emerge from this unprecedented assault. Further clarity on all of those matters must await, alas, the outcome of further battle.
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