Did the success of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” exceed Hamas’ plan?

By George Issa

Planners usually fail if they fail to achieve their goals. Sometimes, they fail because they achieved and then exceeded their goals. In wars, as in all other human activities, excessive success is not always without cost.

Since Hamas launched Operation “Al-Aqsa Flood,” which killed more than 1,300 Israelis and took about 200 hostage, there has been no clear answer about the purpose of the operation. Is it just an exchange of prisoners and the lifting of the siege on Gaza? It is clear that the repercussions of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” go beyond these two goals. A much less qualitative process could have more or less achieved them. This raises the hypothesis whether Hamas itself did not want to launch a blow of this magnitude against the Israelis, before it lost control of restraining the sudden attack.

Remarkable statements

This idea was circulating among the Israelis themselves. On October 13, Al-Monitor quoted what it called a “prominent Israeli military source” saying: “This is not what (Hamas) planned. They would have been happy to end the incident with a few dozen dead on our side along with two to three kidnappers.” "This would have been ideal. They could then blackmail Israel into releasing hundreds of (their detained members) in Israeli prisons, and perhaps even to build a seaport for Gaza in exchange for the release of the hostages."

This statement might have remained in the realm of speculation, had it not been issued a few days later that could amount to additional evidence that Hamas was not aiming to inflict such a large number of Israeli deaths. This time, the “guide” will be issued by an official of the movement itself. On Monday, in an interview with the American newspaper The Washington Post, the leader of the Hamas movement residing in Beirut, Ali Baraka, said: “We expected to get a small number of hostages, but the (Israeli) army collapsed in front of us. What should we do?” Should we do it?

Baraka's statement also indicates that Hamas did not want to kill Israeli civilians as a primary goal. On October 10, Hamas Political Bureau member Musa Abu Marzouk told The Economist magazine that the movement complies with “all international and moral laws” and that its primary goal was only “military centers.” What was striking, according to The Economist, was Marzouk’s lack of any idea of what the movement hoped to achieve from the attack. This may be due to his lack of knowledge of the basic plan (as he said), or because the scale of the attack exceeded the goals formulated by Hamas to the extent that it was not able to modify it to suit developments on the ground.

Analyzes within the same framework

The timing of the attack, which coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, directed public analysis towards thinking about long-term goals such as those that former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had in mind in 1973. However, Hamas’s ideological aspirations and regional connections reduce the ceiling of such expectations, if not eliminate them completely. It is not a remote possibility that the timing was merely symbolic of the extent of the surprise that Israel faced at the time.

Palestinian researcher at the International Crisis Group, Tahani Mustafa, believes that no one is currently able to know the ultimate goal of Hamas. However, in an interview with the Associated Press, she ruled out that the movement has not developed a strategy for every possible scenario, given the long period of time of Preparations. But based at least on Baraka's words, the Israeli army's slow response, and everything that followed, could be one of the scenarios that were absent from Hamas' planning.

Palestinian academic and author of the book “Hamas: A Beginner’s Guide,” Khaled Haroub, also told CNN that Hamas had no plan for the attack to be of this magnitude: “As soon as they entered Israel, they were surprised by the ease of the operation. The operation spread in several directions without planning.” Prior...there was no very clear political demand or goal behind it.”

Between Napoleon and Truman

It is not clear whether Hamas has exceeded the limits of its plan. NBC News obtained what it said were maps that the Israeli army found on the Hamas fighters it killed, and they showed that they included plans to target schools and engage in long hours of fighting with Israeli forces. This fact - if true - reduces the assumption that Hamas has exaggerated its operation. However, the statements of the movement’s leaders and the accompanying analyzes still support this hypothesis to a reasonable extent.

There is a saying attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte that says, “The greatest danger is that which occurs at the moment of victory.” That moment generates excessive self-confidence that could lead to some adverse results in the future. President Harry Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur when he expressed excessive self-confidence in the Korean War.

The movement's fighters may have faced great enthusiasm during the first hours of the storm, which pushed them to exceed the set goals. Therefore, if the number of Israeli deaths and prisoners was much greater than what Hamas actually planned, it is possible that it would not have included in its calculations a comprehensive Israeli invasion that would eclipse the one that the Israelis launched in 2014, which at that time barely reached a few kilometers inside the Gaza Strip.

Theoretically, whether or not to prepare for this scenario could mean the difference between success and failure for the movement. In parallel, it may also mean the difference between the war remaining confined to occupied Palestine or its expansion to a wider region of the Middle East. Currently, these and other hypotheses have become captive to the field. The latter still contains surprises that Hamas prepared for, if not during the planning period, then at least during the long years that preceded it.

Source: "An-Nahar Al-Arabi"