Israel: Hamas – principal or proxy?

By Richard North - October 10, 2023

If this was a normal military campaign – should there be such a thing – we would have some idea of the objectives of the Hamas terror group, as would the Israelis. And that knowledge would help define the response which, in the normal course of events, would be directed initially at frustrating the enemy action.

However, it is very far from clear what Hamas is seeking from this conflict, although it can be confidently asserted that its armed incursions were not aimed at the capture and retention of Israeli territory. The incursions were more in the nature of what the military would define as a raid.

US Military doctrine has it that a raid is a surprise attack against a position or installation for a specific purpose other than seizing and holding the terrain.

It is conducted, we are told, to destroy a position or installation, destroy or capture enemy soldiers or equipment, or free prisoners. Then it is stipulated that a raid patrol retains terrain just long enough to accomplish the intent of the raid. It always ends with a withdrawal off the objective and a return to the main body.

The one exception in the Hamas operation is the final phase of a tactical withdrawal. This was never going to be achieved by the terrorist thugs. They must have known from the outset that most of them were embarking on a one-way trip.

Nevertheless, the actions we have so far witnessed – albeit indirectly, through media reports – are entirely compatible, in a strictly military sense, with the nature of a raid, as generally defined.

If, in the twisted view of the terrorists, civilians were to be seen as “enemy soldiers”, then the slaughter of the innocent – approaching or even exceeding 700 victims – had a certain, if entirely distorted, “military” logic, as did securing hostages.

But, as a logical objective for such a perilous action – with predictable results in terms of immediate Israeli retaliatory action – this does not seem enough (if logic can be applied to such a situation). Inevitably, losses will far outweigh any gain.

Even bearing in mind that killing Jews is seen as sufficient unto itself, therefore, there is considerable speculation that this raid has other, more ambitious objectives – as yet undeclared.

Quick off the mark in these speculation stakes is the Wall Street Journal which, on Sunday, rushed out a piece asserting: “Iran helped plot attack on Israel over several weeks”, with the added claim that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) gave the final go-ahead last Monday in Beirut.

The paper goes on to say that officers of IRGC had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land and sea incursions, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah – also Iran-backed.

Details of the operation, we are told, were refined during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah.

The claim is not supported by the US government, with US officials saying that they haven’t seen evidence of Tehran’s involvement, comments endorsed by secretary of state Blinken, who would only acknowledge the possibility, saying “there is certainly a long relationship”.

Out in the open, Mahmoud Mirdawi, a senior Hamas official, said the group planned the attacks on its own. “This is a Palestinian and Hamas decision”, he said, while a spokesman for Iran’s mission to the UN said the Islamic Republic stood in support of Gaza’s actions but didn’t direct them.

However, according to ITV’s Robert Peston, the British government believes that Hamas’s atrocities were sponsored by Iran and warn that Netanyahu is highly likely to retaliate.

Biden and the US, Peston says, would try to limit the scope of any Israeli strike on Iran, but would neither want to nor be able to veto it. Thus, there is a risk of this crisis spreading well beyond the Middle East because of Putin’s links with Iran.

Add to this the West’s deep concerns about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and China’s power struggle with America and, Peston concludes, “We are in the early stages of a conflict with ramifications for much of the world”.

Raz Zimmt, a research associate at Alliance Centre for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University, is not convinced that Iran was directly involved with the planning of the Hamas operation or directed it – currently the publicly stated view of the Israeli military.

Furthermore, Zimmt takes the view that Iran has no interest in expanding the conflict between Israel and Hamas to other arenas through active participation during the occasional rounds of warfare between Israel and the Palestinians.

But, he concedes, the Hamas operation is “a reality-changing event in the Middle East” that may oblige Iran to move from the phase of ongoing support and coordination to a more direct involvement, especially if the Israeli response poses a significant challenge to Hamas.

If the WSJ is right, however, this would suggest that the objectives of the Hamas “raid” went far beyond the limited, if horrific, aim of killing Jews but had a wider geopolitical scope, with considerable regional significance – with a possible wider impact.

In this context, it has been noted that Iran stands to benefit from the conflict if it disrupts the Biden administration’s efforts to normalise relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. With suggestions that this is the only benefit from the Hamas attack, that alone could be enough to justify Iran’s intervention.

Yet, even if Iran was not directly involved before the event, it is likely to be drawn into the conflict as a sponsor and supporter of Hamas. Either way, therefore, any Israeli response to the Hamas raid must factor in the likely reaction from Iran, which may dictate pre-emptive military strikes against its military assets or even its nuclear plant.

In strict military terms, it is too late for Israel to counter the Hamas raid, other than to mop up the terrorists remaining on its territory, and to repair and reinforce border fences and installations.

Netanyahu’s determination to respond, therefore – especially if it involves his threatened invasion of Gaza – would be more in the nature of a revenge attack, with the secondary aim of degrading Hamas’s command structure, and destroying its capability to wage war against Israel – the effects of which are likely to be temporary.

But, if the attack turns out to have been primarily motivated by Iran’s own objectives, then it does not make sense for Israel to limit its own response to attacks on a proxy. It needs to tackle the organ-grinder as well as the monkey. The situation is ripe for escalation.

Ironically, Israel is perhaps better equipped to take the war to Iran than it is to Gaza. While the former might involve a series of precision air strikes – at which the IAF excels – ground operations in heavily populated urban areas are difficult to execute and fraught with great risk.

Although lauded as one of the most powerful militaries in the world, the IDF has in fact been weakened by delays – largely due to budgetary restrictions – in its re-equipment programme, aimed at replacing vulnerable US-built M-113 APCs, from the Vietnam era, with next-generation Eitan APCs and additional Namer heavy APCs.

These, rather than tanks – which are not suitable for urban warfare – are needed to do the heavy lifting as they were specifically designed for the sort of fighting likely to be experienced in Gaza.

In the longer term, attempts at the military subjugation of Gaza could suck the Israelis into an unwinnable war – an experience with which we are sadly familiar. Militarily, therefore, it might be better if Iran turned out to be the principal villain, and Hamas the proxy, even if the political implications hardly bear thinking about.