This is not your usual Hamas-Israel dust-up. The Gaza-Israel border is only 37 miles long, but the shock waves this war will unleash will not only thrust Israel and the Palestinians of Gaza into turmoil, but will also slam into Ukraine and Saudi Arabia and most likely Iran. Why? Any prolonged Israel-Hamas war could divert more U.S. military equipment needed by Kyiv to Tel Aviv, and it will make the proposed Saudi-Israeli normalization deal impossible — for now. And if it turns out that Iran encouraged the Hamas attack to scuttle that Israeli-Saudi deal, it could raise tensions between Israel and Iran and Tehran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, and also between Saudi Arabia and Iran. This is an incredibly dangerous moment on multiple fronts.

But going back to Nahum’s point: Why is this war such a disaster for Israel, worse than the Yom Kippur surprise attack from Egypt and Syria, which happened 50 years and one day ago? For starters, said Nahum, there is the sheer humiliation of it for the Israeli military: “In 1973 we were attacked by the biggest Arab army, Egypt.”

This time Israel was invaded in 22 locations outside the Gaza Strip, including communities as far as 15 miles inside Israel, by a military force belonging to “the equivalent of Luxembourg.” And yet this tiny force not only invaded Israel, overwhelming Israeli border troops; it took Israeli hostages back to Gaza across that same border — a border where Israel had spent roughly $1 billion erecting a barrier that was supposed to be virtually impenetrable. That is a shocking blow to Israel’s deterrent capabilities.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/07/opinion/israel-hamas-attack-friedman.html