By: Walid Habbas is a researcher at the Palestinian Forum for Israeli Studies (MADAR) and a PhD candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Here’s what we look like a harvest for the transformations of the Israeli scene since the October 7 attack. Throughout the days of the war, we had submitted many reports at the Palestinian Centre for Israeli Studies-Madar and published them periodically. In this paper, we compile the most important conclusions of these reports, focussing them in nine main themes that will be addressed successively: 1) Why is the October 7 attack a founding event that drives transformations within the State of Israel; 2) How does Israel manage the war, and what does it want? 3) How does the issue of Israeli prisoners interact; 4) How does the issue of Israeli security failure interact and reflect its shadows on the course of the war; 5) International reactions about Israel and the war; 6) the making of world opinion and psexo-disive speeches; 7) the fate of the Palestinian Authority and the two-state solution in light of the course of the war; 8) highlighting other important transformations taking place under the radar in the West Bank square, 9) the impact of the war on Palestinians at home.
The aim of this lengthy report is to monitor the transformations currently plaguing Israel, the dilemmas it faces, and the contradictions it faces, which would lay the foundations for new features of the State of Israel and its relationship with the Palestinian cause.
The October 7 attack was a founding event that shocked Israel and others
Observers agree that the Hamas attack on October 7 has turned into a founding event that will remain an inherent Israel in the future, and is too big to be a mere “scar” in its face. The attack involved specific vehicles that Israel did not expect to be exposed to at the same time, at least in this period, which are:
Three thousand Palestinian fighters enter an organised military formation (similar to an army or militia) and fight over an area covering tens of square kilometres. Although Israel consistently declares that it was ready for such a scenario in the northern border, its occurrence in the southern border was never taken into account. The Hamas attack affected nine security, military, and intelligence headquarters, and controlled them almost completely after they were “neutralised” and cut off their contact, seized materials from inside, and captured dozens of officers and soldiers present in them.
Hamas attacked Israeli homes in 22 civilian settlements, and took control of the kibbutzim for long hours, which turned the attack into a “huge” event that will characterise the global, Israeli and Palestinian memory. The Israelis may want to compare it in terms of status to the 9/11 attacks in the United States, or Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour in World War II. The breadth of the attack and the occurrence of more than 1,200 Israeli deaths in one day have contributed to the revitalisation of discourses and narratives related to the Holocaust, Nazism, and anti-Semitism, and these speeches currently constitute the general framework within which most Israeli society and pro-Israelists view the attack.
Israeli prisoners reached about 241 people, including officers, soldiers, and civilians. Only 110 of them were released in the period of the humanitarian truce. This case has created a new situation in Israel, which has not previously seen a case of large-scale mass capture.
Many of the settlements covered by the Hamas attack are currently no longer habitable (and the role of indiscriminate Israeli bombing in the scale of the destruction inflicted on them is constantly revealed). It created a situation of displacement within Israel, although Israel does not use this phrase, but rather declares that it is a mere “eviction” of settlements located in areas of “war.” In addition, the “evacuation” of the residents of some northern settlements, bringing the number of Israelis who have been “displaced” to another place of residence to about 130,000, creating with them a social and relief crisis, related to their care, housing, psychological and social strengthening, and assimilation. A recent State Comptroller report suggests that the absorption of those evacuated from their settlements was a major failure story that revealed the inability of ministries to deal with the matter properly.
In addition to the war on the Gaza Strip, the current war puts Israel in front of three additional arenas, in each square there is a different “enemy”, and a different nature of dealing with the war. The first is the war that has been ongoing with Hezbollah since October 8, albeit a war on a “quiet fire.” Its development into an open war is a highly likely option for Israel and its desires, and it is not a favourite for the territory, the international community, or the United States. The second arena is the military operations in the northern West Bank, which witnessed a quantum leap in their intensity and continuity during the war. This may not be considered another war front, but it captures Israel’s current interest as it sees war as an opportunity to accomplish what could not have been accomplished before the war. The third arena is the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, where the Houthis are cutting off Israeli trade routes and forming a regional and trade crisis. The formation of a military pact by the United States to restore things in the Red Sea indicates the expansion of the war to include regional and international military movements, although these expansions remain in terms of “protection” and “deterrence” and not with the aim of participating in the war.
The last compound that characterises this war is the recall of about 360,000 reserve personnel, and directly involving them in the war, the broadest reserve call in Israel’s history. On the one hand, large sectors within Israel, including hi-tack, education, logistics, and trade, have been disrupted by the call of its workers for military service. On the other hand, recalling this amount of precaution has reinforced the normalisation of the state of war in Israeli society, so that every neighbourhood, city and settlement in Israel has children participating in the war, funerals and burials are held in almost all cities, and committees and forums are active in it to raise “national immunity” and sharpen the fighting spirit.
Taken together, these vehicles shape the general scene of the war, are considered unprecedented for Israel and put it in front of a war of a kind it has not seen in the past, and constitute a real test of its position in the Middle East and its relationship with the Palestinians in particular. Regardless of the discourses adopted by Israel about the war such as, the war against Hamas-ISIS, the battle between light and dark, the conflict between the free world and Islamic terrorism, sooner or later Israel will stand in the face of the dilemma that the Palestinian factions have turned from the stage of “light armed resistance” to a resistance similar to the formation of the organised army capable of planning, spying, deception, and attacking.
How does Israel conduct the war, and what does it want?
To answer this question, we suggest looking at three overlapping levels: 1) war objectives, 2) war management, and 3) war phases.
With regard to the objectives of the war, the Israeli government has set three military objectives and presented them as the only objectives of the war. There is an Israeli consensus on these goals, but there is no consensus to prioritise them, which are 1) returning Israeli prisoners, 2) undermining Hamas’s military and government capabilities, and 3) ending the security threat to Israel’s settlements. But during the war, three other political-military objectives were also crystalised in which the Israeli street is involved from time to time but are firmly present on the war agenda, namely: 1) restructuring the Palestinian Authority, 2) moving the Palestinian issue file to a new, more comfortable stage for Israel, 3) keeping Hezbollah away from the Lebanese border. The last three goals are not about the direct course of battle, but can be described as “strategic goals that war presents an opportunity to achieve.”
But the objectives of the war cannot be discussed in isolation from understanding the management of the war in Israel and the factors affecting its conduct. There are several factors that affect the course of the war, its duration and the space left by the Israeli government to achieve its goals, and these factors are: 1) the person of Benjamin Netanyahu and his desperate struggle for power, which is a factor that pushes the prolongation of the war under the pretext of eliminating Hamas; 2) the nature of the coalition leading the war and its ability to continue its internal homogeneity and cohesion, 3) the deepening economic crisis and the disruption of large segments of the Israeli economy, which puts Israel in front of internal challenges that may not continue to be able to control them as is the case so far; 4) the security and military rehabilitation to maintain Israel’s geopolitical position, which may be at stake, which prompts not to be satisfied with a “image of victory”, Rather, it is necessary to achieve in-kind achievements; 4) the fate of the Israeli street’s interaction with the continuation of the war and the issue of prisoners; 5) The international position and its interactions.
The final level of understanding the nature of the current war, and what Israel wants from it, relates to the stages of the war. Israel has placed three main phases, declaring that the current war may extend throughout the year 2024: 1) the first stage is to prepare the battlefield through large-scale aerial bombardment; 2) the second stage is land maneuvering, in which all of Israel’s land, air, and sea weapons combine to penetrate to the heart of the Strip and demolish the tunnels and eliminate Hamas combat brigades; 3) there is a hint that the third stage may be to stay and redeploy within the Gaza Strip and continue for months to direct in-kind strikes to the Qassam Brigades, including access to the senior leadership of Hamas. It is clear that Israel does not announce the next stage of the war, except when it reaches the end of the previous stage, study the lessons, and adapt the future agenda based on what has been achieved.
It must be noted that the third phase of the war opens the question of the political fate of the sector, and the file of reconstruction, which has become clear that it goes beyond the issue of “generous donor” to the question of what is the “political project” capable of doing so. There are also hints from Israeli officials that residents of the northern Strip will not return to their neighbourhoods before settlers return to their kibbuttism, which may not happen before 2025.
Israel wants a comprehensive exchange deal to conclude the prisoner file before reaching the third phase, which could include “completion” of the combat ground invasion, just military occupation, and completing the elimination of Hamas on a “low fire.”
Returning Israeli prisoners or continuing the war at all costs?
The current war has confirmed an inherent attribute in Israeli society, which is that the security threat is considered a melting pot, and a comprehensive moment that pushes to silence internal differences and rifts and restore cohesion within Israeli society. The attack took place at a time of the greatest political divide within Israel, a partisan split (between Netanyahu’s camp and the anti-Netanniyahu camp that contributed to the refining of election rounds five times in four years), in addition to being an identity societal divide (between conservative right-wing Israel and a liberal-democratic Israel), and a split in the project (between advocates of judicial reforms, the state’s biblical religious identity, advocates of sof internationalism, the separation of powers, and the modern state’s identity). The war has confirmed that it is capable of overcoming (at least temporarily) these internal divisions and rifts at least in the public space and the media. Immediately, the government coalition was expanded to include political parties who were almost impossible to meet at a single decision-making table before Oct. 7.
But there are new tendencies that must also be monitored and their meanings be heeded, which are related to the relationship between the length of the war operation to which Israel is emerging and the size of the losses it incurs during this process. Israel did not go out into the all-out war against the Gaza Strip the day after the attack, but waited about 19 days before the ground offensive began. During this period, Israel has exhausted all its capabilities and energies to prepare the home front for the situation of the long war, the psychological readiness to accept a large number of deaths during the war operation. Unlike previous wars or past rounds of combat with the Gaza Strip or Lebanon, the magnitude of human losses suffered by the Israeli army has not been, at least until today, a key factor that contributes to determining the age of the war, its internal repercussions, and the nature of its objectives, which is a new situation that must be studied and detailed. The Israeli society has been prepared to receive painful and deadly blows on a daily basis for a period of time, so that the general climate within the Israeli society can be described as follows: 1) At six in the morning and then 6 pm, the Israeli army announces its killers during the previous day, and they are on average between 2-4 dead, but in certain cases they may reach 10 dead daily; 2) There are military funerals in all cities and towns on a daily basis; 3) at 8:30 pm, the military spokesman for the army summarises the course of the battle; and so on.
Although there are Israeli voices calling for an end to the war, contentment with what happened, and completing the process of achieving the goals with other tools beyond the bloody field war, these voices remain shy in the face of the magnitude of the disaster that Israel believes has been solved. Although the families of the Israeli prisoners (by the way, they are from the settlements that were attacked, most of which are located in the anti-Netanyahu camp), are raising their motivity to demand the immediate release of the prisoners, there is a moral-political conflict in Israeli society about this matter. This conflict can be characterised as between the “part” i.e. the families of the prisoners (and there is no dispute over the state’s duty to return its children from captivity) and the “all” i.e. the Israeli state, the security system and the future of the country. In recent weeks, the “Forum of Champions” has been active, a forum that brings together the families of soldiers and army officers who fell during the war (and who by the way outnumber Israeli prisoners). This forum, with its strong understanding of the demands of the families of the prisoners, demands not to stop the war at any price, and so that the sacrifices of the soldiers do not go in vain.
The issue of the increase in the number of soldiers killed during the war may play a role contrary to what Israel knew. In the past, the increase in the number of soldiers killed during the previous rounds of fighting was considered a factor in the suppression of the continuation of the war, and the increase in their number during the current war may be a driving factor for its continuity. Analyses from observers close to Israeli decision-making circles suggest that the Israeli government may abandon the idea of returning Israeli prisoners “alives” has received (albeit reluctantly) understanding by Israeli society.
The issue of Israeli security failure does not lose sid of Israel during the war
The Hamas attack (which the Israeli media usually calls the “sudden strike”) revealed the near-total failure of the security-military-intelligence system that is a source of pride for the powerful State of Israel. Although there have been military or intelligence failures in previous wars, after October 7, the heads of the Shin Bet, the Army, the Military Intelligence Division, the National Security Council, the Minister of Defence, the Commander of the Air Force announced their direct failure, which means the entire security-military-intelligence system. The Israelis believe that there may be strategic repercussions of this failure, and need to be monitored in the future, such as the concept of “internal immunity” and the idea of Israel as the safest place for Jews, Israeli deterrence capabilities, Israel’s prestigious position in the security world, the security and information industries and military investments community, and regional alliances between armies. In contrast, analyses of Israeli officials, whether political or military, can note that the rehabilitation of the Israeli military and intelligence security system is present in the form of war, the scale of the destruction it is inflicts, the “retaliatory” strikes, and the nature of the goals Israel seeks to achieve. The failure of the security system can be understood at the following levels:
He failed to gather the right information, so that intelligence technology and hundreds of millions of investment in cyber security could not detect the magnitude of readiness of Hamas, whether in terms of offensive capabilities, planning, tunnel infrastructure, and the nature of the weapons and tactics available to the movement.
Failed to read the information collected. Many intelligence signals have arrived about unconventional Hamas exercises, and a sharp rise in the nature of communications between its elements on the eve of the attack, yet the heads of the most important security services who were familiar with the matter failed to read these indicators professionally.
Failure to turn information into a political vision. While the previous two failures are related to intelligence security services, the failure to turn intelligence into a political vision is a matter of political level, specifically the head of the National Security Council and the head of government himself. This failure indicates the ineffectiveness of the algorithm adopted by Israel in linking intelligence inputs with policy outputs, so that the political level remained convinced until October 6 that Hamas is steeped in the pleasures of power and subject to Israeli deterrence.
The first reaction failed. With all this failure, the initial image of the attack was clear at 8:00 a.m., an hour and a half after the attack began. Although this is a relatively long period, the movement of the army, air force, and police and the start of an organised military operation to “clear” the territory of Israel of fighters took more than 4 hours was more than enough for the fighters to accomplish their mission beyond their own expectations.
International reactions to Israel and the war
Many countries have expressed solidarity with Israel and condemned the Hamas attacks. The United States, then the rest of the Western world, is at the forefront of these countries. In contrast, Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and Africa expressed support for the Palestinians and criticised the Israeli occupation as the root cause of the attack, calling for a ceasefire.
But the most important thing is the transformation of the war into an issue of world public opinion that has been associated with Israel’s excessive violence, violations of the laws of war, Israel’s intention of colonisation and the occupation of the lands of others. Although the Israeli Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Strategic Affairs, and the Prime Minister’s Information Office, are investing their full potential, working 24/7, international interactions outweigh Israel’s ability to control them, or accommodate its ramifications, something that could put Israel’s future image at stake.
The most important international institutions and organisations monitor the war (such as NATO, the European Union), as well as international alliances and coalitions, and various political parties around the world. In most cases related to the Western world, the official speech issued by these parties was in defense of Israel’s right to self-Defence. It was accompanied by “immediate” visits as the war began to the State of Israel to advocate and support that included US President Joe Biden and his staff, and the prime ministers of the European Union, Romania, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Cyprus, Greece, the Netherlands, France, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Latvia, Spain, and Belgium. This trend indicates that the war has re-sorted the world’s systems and governments around the issue of Israel, and has clearly highlighted the Western world’s sharing with Israel in terms of shared values, identity, and political agendas.
In contrast, popular discourse across the world has been reacting in favour of the Palestinians. Dozens of major demonstrations erupted in the cities of the world, foreign student organisations joined major universities, and the main social media (most importantly TikTok, X, and other means) dominated the anti-Israel narrative, although in all cases not accompanied by direct support for Hamas. In addition, the BDS movement has been unprecedentedly active. Many companies have faced protests and boycotts, especially those seen as affiliated with Israel or Western governments that support Israel, including prominent companies like Starbucks, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Puma. In contrast, a group of companies supported Israel, and donated to the Israeli military during the war, such as Walt Disney, Citigroup, Google, H&M, Intercontinental Hotel Group, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley. Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Textron and Boeing (advanced arms manufacturers) have faced protests by anti-war protesters over their participation in Israel Defence contracts.
These interactions, in which actors, celebrities, athletes, prominent media professionals, and academics also participated, indicate that both the State of Israel and the Palestinian cause have returned to occupy a central position in international public opinion, and that a clear opinion on a sensitive issue such as Israel is a must regardless of the consequences. In general, major for-profit companies may shy away from a political position because of profit-loss calculations, or the president of major universities may rise above a position because of ethical and professional protocols. But during the current war, many of these barriers were broken and the limits and controls of freedom of opinion were broken, which returned to the image of Israel.
Making global public opinion and the discourse of war
During the war, Israel was busy with the issue of promoting and creating world public opinion, in an attempt to obliterate the facts, distort the Palestinian narrative, and impose a Zionist narrative demonising the resistance or even the right of Palestinians to be free from occupation. There are two prominent trends that must be paid attention to in this context. The first expresses Israel’s failure to create world public opinion through organisations and institutions (or what is known as the official haspara). There has been a rapid decline in the size of pro-Israel organisations and institutions that are considered to be involved in the haspara, due to their ineffectiveness in the face of the dominant Palestinian narrative in the world. This failure demonstrates a high critical awareness of colonialism and the Zionist movement among masses around the world, a phenomenon that is usually remarkably active in periods of war in Israel. In contrast, the second trend that needs to be paid attention to is the stagering rise in the participation of Israeli citizens themselves (not institutions, organisations, or governments) in initiatives aimed at shaping a Zionist narrative about the conflict, a phenomenon that can be defined as the popular haspara. Popular haspara is a new phenomenon worth researching for its implications and potential, as new forums (such as the Forum of Families of the Kidnapped) form new frameworks that include tens of thousands of volunteers who are trying to professionalise the popular haspara. Every Israeli individual is free in their way of “occupying” social media, improvising their way of defending and promoting Israel’s position on the international stage.
The war and the Palestinian cause
The war constituted a collapse of Israel’s doctrine regarding the Gaza Strip. This doctrine was based on a solid, but false conviction, that Hamas fell into the “illusion of power,” and was under the Israeli deterrent authority. Previous Israeli governments have benefitted from this doctrine attributed to Netanyahu and his political orientations in allowing Hamas’ capabilities in the Gaza Strip to grow, while at the same time weakening the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Maintaining the division, and not moving the Palestinian issue, allowed the expansion of settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank in a way that is difficult to go back. This doctrine failed after it became clear that instead of Hamas sinking into the “delusion of power,” it was Israel itself that drowned into the “deterrence illusion” it imposes on the Palestinians.
One currently salient issue is Israel’s opposition to the PA’s return to the Gaza Strip, despite international and regional pressure to “rehabilitate” the PA to take over the next day after the war. Israel fears that the PA’s reinstatement could pave the way for Hamas’s regrowth and eventual takeover of the Palestinian political system. This opposition raises the question of how Israel can effectively prevent the re-emergence of Hamas while at the same time rejecting the return of the Palestinian Authority, creating a controversial dilemma about the political future of the Palestinian regime as Israel sees it.
On a strategic level, Israel is pushing for political outcomes from the war to more institutionalisedly reproduce the Palestinian division, by creating a strong, technocratic, and alternative power to Palestinian parties in the Gaza Strip. Apparently from the analyses of Israeli insiders, Israel hopes that the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank will be integrated with the new authority to be established in the Strip, not the other way around, suggesting that the PA in the West Bank will have a “test” to rehabilitate it, de-ideological political identity and turn it into a non-ideological policeman, without a political agenda, in the region. Israel proposes that an international body (similar to the international quartet) be established, headed by the United States and Israel, whose function will be to rehabilitate the West Bank authority over the next two years so as to: 1) establish rules for the change of powers after the mandate of President Mahmoud Abbas, 2) rehabilitate the security services, 3) make serious transformations in education curricula and the production of new generations of Palestinians, 4) end bureaucratic corruption, clientelism, and waste of public money.
But this strategic level remains just general directions, as the executive level of these trends is dealt with the course of the battle on the ground, the international and regional position, and the acceptance by the Palestinians themselves of the new form of government in the Gaza Strip in the event that Hamas’ return to rule is not a matter due to the course of the war and its consequences.
Other important shifts taking place under the radar in the West Bank Square
There are shifts within the Departments of National Security and the Ministry of Defence that are taking place in parallel with the outbreak of war and must be paid attention to. These transformations are taking place because of the presence of two ministers from the ultra-religious Zionist movement in the leadership of these two ministries, a trend that has been penetrating more into the deep state and institutionalising extremist trends within the main ministries in Israel. On the one hand, the entry of Itamar bin Gvir into the Ministry of National Security, which is responsible for the police, border guards, prisons, the distribution of weapons and the National Guard, parallelled the resignation of many former officials of this ministry, or the exit of others to retirement. This left a vacuum within the ministry that was filled by very extremist settlers, some of whom were hill youth graduates and with criminal and terrorist precedents. The consequences of this shift have been made clear in the issue of unprofessional distribution of weapons and the empowerment of extremists and settler fanatics to carry and use weapons without supervision. It was also evident from the policies of the new prison administration, the imposition of emergency systems and random political arrests within Israel.
On the other hand, the assumption of a second minister within the Ministry of Defence made him the supreme engineer of the settlement project in the West Bank, as his position enables it to supervise the civil administration, the office of the coordinator, the settlement councils, and with powers that are the first of its kind to complete the most important episode in the settlement project, which is to turn it into a non-dismantleable project. Since the beginning of the war, the settlers have benefitted from these shifts and broke out of security, practising organised terrorism in an unprecedented way.
What matters in these transformations, especially with regard to the West Bank and the settlement project, does not lie in the current results and the number of martyrs or the number of new settlement housing units. Rather, the importance of this shift lies in introducing structural transformations to the work of the colonial system in the West Bank, which are considered the first in terms of their size, type and repercussions since 1967, and indicate the transition of the settlement project to a new stage that can be described as a stage 1) resolving the conflict on the territory of the West Bank, and 2) resolving the relationship between Israel and the Palestinian Authority as a professional and coordinating professional relationship subject to the equation of reward and punishment based on the expected performance of this authority. Although during the war, all eyes are turning towards the Gaza Strip, the West Bank square is witnessing structural transformations that may be no less important in terms of their strategic impact on the future of the Palestinian cause.
Palestinians inside Israel
Israel has presented the current war as a war between extremist terrorism on the one hand, and the citizens of the State of Israel on the other, whether Jewish or Arab, and constantly recalls that there are about 17 Bedouin Palestinians among the victims of the Hamas attack on October 7. In addition, Arab citizens of the State of Israel were also captured by Hamas. In contrast, Netanyahu said that Palestinians at home are, in theory, another front that could explode in the face of Israel alongside the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the northern border.
Although the interaction of Palestinian political parties and movements in Israel has continued since the beginning of the war, the current war has not, so far, been an urgent moment to reopen the classic questions within political life in Israel related to the fate of the Arab identity of the citizens of the State of Israel and the methods of expressing and defending this identity. Even Arab Knesset members said there was no justification for harming innocent Israelis and condemned Hamas’ behaviour, using this statement as a prelude to condemn Israeli violence on the Gaza Strip. This official speech, shared by most Arab Knesset members, was a balance between maintaining a Palestinian discourse of solidarity with maintaining the limits of criticism allowed by Israeli citizenship.
In contrast, Israel used the emergency law in time of war, imposing arbitrary measures and restricting freedom of expression and assembly in an attempt to control the behaviour of Palestinian society at home. Israel has also systematically suppressed clearly anti-war Arab voices, whether individual or partisan votes, such as arresting participants in vigils. The relationship between Israelis and Arabs in the public space witnessed a clear tension after the dismissal of several students from Israeli universities, and after the dismissal of Arabs from their jobs in hospitals, the educational or private sector because of their solidarity with the Palestinian cause, or with Hamas.
This research was published in Arabic by The Palestinian Centre for Israeli Studies (Madar) is an independent research center specializing in Israeli affairs, based in the city of Ramallah.