DThe old Middle East conflict seemed to be a thing of the past; peace with Saudi Arabia was even within reach. But when Israel woke up at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles on Saturday morning, the old traumas were suddenly back.
The worst of it: Hamas and Islamic Jihad announced that they had soldiers in their control, and numerous Israeli civilians were apparently kidnapped, while several terrorist commandos from Gaza continued to rage in southern Israel. On Saturday afternoon, the Magen David Adom rescue service reported at least 40 deaths.
Israel promises all of its citizens that it will bring them back – living or dead and, if necessary, from all over the world. This is especially true for the soldiers who defend their country. Its enemies have been trying to exploit this promise, which makes the strong Israel vulnerable, for decades; Palestinian terrorists as well as the Lebanese Hezbollah militia. In 1976, an elite Israeli unit freed 106 hostages in Entebbe. In 2008, Israel agreed to a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah. This handed over the bodies of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped in 2006. In return, Israel released Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners and handed over the bodies of 199 Lebanese and Palestinians.
More than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for one Israeli
But the sunken face of the young private Gilad Schalit is etched in the memories of many Israelis as he cautiously took his first steps towards his regained freedom. He was a prisoner of Hamas in Gaza for 1,940 days until he returned to Israel in October 2011. In return, the government had to release almost 1,100 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli custody. In 2009, Israel released 19 imprisoned Palestinian women just for a sign of life.
The soldier, whom his kidnappers kidnapped from his tank into Gaza through a tunnel not far from Rafah in 2006, became a national hero in Israel, whose fate preoccupied the entire country. At first, most people were relieved when Shalit returned to his family. However, after Hamas members who were released in 2011 began carrying out attacks again, criticism grew.
On Saturday: Palestinians kidnap an Israeli civilian in the Gaza Strip.
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Image: AP
And Hamas did not give up. The longest and most costly war to date lasted almost six weeks in the summer of 2014. According to the UN, 1,475 civilians were killed, including 505 children and young people. The Israeli government, however, says up to a thousand fighters have been killed. In Israel, 71 people were killed, including 66 soldiers and a four-year-old boy. In Gaza, tens of thousands were also made homeless.
It was a sobering experience for Israel, which prides itself on having the strongest armed forces in the region. In the third longest war in the country’s history, it failed to defeat an Islamist group whose core consisted of 3,000 fighters.
The missile defense now kept Israeli losses within limits. But even 80,000 soldiers did not prevent Hamas and its allies from firing almost 5,000 rockets at Israel – according to Hamas there were that many on Saturday morning alone, according to Israeli press reports there were at least 2,500. The attackers have now also taken Jerusalem – as in 2014 Visor.
In the end, the 2014 war left behind only huge mountains of rubble and politically only losers: the ceasefire that Hamas and Israel agreed on in the end was proposed by Egypt just a week after the war broke out. But the Palestinian Islamists wanted to keep fighting.
Israel wanted to learn from the mistakes of Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” in 2014 and, above all, to prevent Hamas and its allies from ever becoming as strong again. There is more than just a high fence around the strip of land on the Mediterranean that has been controlled by Hamas since 2006. The army dug deep and tried to use underground barriers to prevent terrorist squads from entering Israel through tunnels. Above all, Israel relied on its missile defense, the further development of which Germany also bought.
However, when it comes to the Palestinians recently, the attention has been focused on the West Bank. Gaza seemed forgotten and abandoned. Benjamin Netanyahu, who likes to appear as “Mister Security,” and his right-wing religious government are facing unpleasant questions about how they could have so underestimated the dangers from the south.
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