Why Hamas went rogue on October 7 and how the West could end the war

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The mass attack against Israel came from all sides, coordinated by Iran. Lebanon fired tens of thousands of missiles and sent combat units across the border. Syria, Yemen, Iraq all sent missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles. Meanwhile from Gaza, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad followed, firing so many missiles as to overwhelm the Iron Dome.

Roads, electricity, communications system, army bases, airports, all destroyed.

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It was the doomsday scenario that never was — at least not yet. Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a Middle East scholar, predicted this scenario six months before October 7.

“The Iranian plan was a barrage to destroy Israel within a week,” Kedar told the National Post during a recent Toronto visit.

But Hamas went rogue on October 7.

The terror group was supposed to wait until the order came from Iran for a coordinated assault. The Islamic Republic wanted to attack, when their nuclear capability was ready, to deter any retaliation.

But Hamas smelled weakness and a fissure in Israeli society when 200 Israeli F-15 pilots were boycotting training to protest judicial reforms in March 2023. The in-fighting and mass demonstrations “destroyed the image of Israel as a powerful country” to its neighbours.

“It inflated the Jihad glands in the bodies of our neighbours. They went out in the streets to celebrate. ‘No fighters, no pilots!’ It encouraged them to start the war,” Kedar said. They were looking for the right time, and the Nova Music Festival was a welcome opportunity — thousands of unarmed party-goers in a single place.

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At the same time, Hamas sought to derail negotiations between the Saudis and Israel on a path to normalization. According to Kedar, the result would have been a kind of peace domino effect: Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Tunisia, Mali, Chad and Niger would have followed, “mainly because of the American goodies.” But it would have diverted attention from the Palestinian cause, Kedar said, which is unacceptable to Hamas.

The calculation, then, was to kidnap hundreds of Israelis, with the expectation that Israel would swap them for manifold more Palestinian prisoners. As precedent, in 2011 a single IDF soldier, Gilad Shalit, was exchanged for a thousand Palestinian prisoners — and the anticipated trade-math was exhilarating. Obviously, they miscalculated the aftermath.

Still, jihadists believe that the destruction and civilian casualties are the cost necessary to destroy Israel, Kedar said. The Quaran preaches that dying for Islam is praiseworthy, he said, and therefore “the tantrum over civilians killed is for the foreign media. It’s good PR.”

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Kedar was in Toronto on June 25, giving a talk sponsored by the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation, Toronto Zionist Council and Canadians for Israel’s Legal Rights.

He is a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies and an expert on Islamist groups and Middle East affairs, and vice president of Newsrael, a news site about the Middle East. He served 25 years in the Israel Defense Forces intelligence, specializing in Arab political discourse and media, and Islamic groups. Having written scores of articles on Arab politics, Kedar appears often in media, providing analysis and commentary on Middle Eastern affairs.

And now, in the struggle to determine a workable plan after Operation Swords of Iron, Kedar proposes splitting Gaza and the Palestinian Authority along its clan lines, administered by their own communities. Clans, or tribes, he believes, aren’t bad words; rather, they are embedded strongly into Arab culture. These splits would avert conflicts between other clans, and Israel. “It fits the culture of the Middle East, because it fits the clan mentality.”

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It makes the difference between a successful, and a failing Arab state, he said. The failing ones, like Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran. And the successful ones — Qatar, the seven Emirates, Kuwait — that have economic stability, safety, law and order. These by no coincidence, are run by clans: al-Sabah (Kuwait), al-Thani (Qatar), al-Nahayan (Abu Dhabi), al-Saud (Saudi Arabia), al-hashim (Jordan) and so on.

“A Palestinian state with all of the clans together would fail because it’s the same disease as Syria,” he said.

He wrote his PhD on the Syrian attempts to convince their people of a single clan, and to focus on a single enemy, Israel. “It didn’t work,” he said, because inter-clan and religious conflict killed hundreds of thousands.

“Every clan sees the other clan as the enemy because they are ‘not from us,’” he said, adding that prejudice and discrimination is rampant in the region.

“In terms of Palestinians, if you tell me their last name I’ll tell you where they live, because they live in compounds, or you might say a community. The word in ancient Arabic for clan and neighbourhood are homonyms. If you moved across the street to another clan, it would be like you were exiled. Clans don’t intermarry.” There are five clans alone in Hebron.

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For at least eight decades, Gaza has been split into five administrative districts, without much clan overlap. Kedar’s idea is to let Gazan clans run their own affairs.

“This could very well work — with no Hamas, which no one wants,” he said. “Otherwise a Palestinian state could very well turn into another Hamastan.”

In 2006, Hamas won the elections in Gaza, and occupy a majority of the legislative council of the Palestinian Authority.

It’s a struggle for many to hear conversation about clans and tribes, he said, because it isn’t politically correct.

“It reminds people of the Indians. It raises all kinds of conscience problems.”

World leaders especially, who are forming policy and donating billions of aid, operate with a Western mindset involving innovation, reciprocal altruism and human rights. “But this misunderstanding and ignorance of the Arab mindset isn’t just alive and kicking. It’s alive and killing.”

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