'They are not chess players': Did Hamas anticipate the blowback from Israel?

Did Hamas anticipate the blowback for the October 7 attack on Israel was going to be as dramatic as it is currently unfolding? Veteran Indian-American journalist, political commentator and author Fareed Zakaria spoke about the Israel-Hamas war and said that the Hamas militants might not have thought so.

Speaking to Business Today Executive Director, Rahul Kanwal, Zakaria said that Hamas militants are “not chess players” but often “young, agitated, revolutionary-type hotheads” who might not necessarily have calculated the consequences. 

“My own general view about this is that people exaggerate the smarts of a lot of these terrorists. I mean these are often young, agitated, revolutionary-type hotheads…they are not great chess players. They are not sitting there masterminding this. I think it would be fair to say that they have not thought through the fact that Israelis would respond. Of course, the Israelis would respond in a fairly big way. Did they believe it would be as dramatic as what you are seeing now…I doubt it,” said Zakaria.

The veteran journalist further added that the Israeli response has probably surprised Hamas in terms of the “size and scale of the area bombardment”. He said considering the way Israel mobilised its army and the ones in reserve, they have a “huge army”. 

“So, I don’t know if they had thought through…what do we do if we have thousands and thousands of bombs dropped on Gaza, what do we do if half the population is being evacuated from Northern Gaza. What they are facing now is probably the most significant military operation against a Palestinian group since 1948,” he said. 

Zakaria said that the reason Israel did the kind of area bombardment that they did is because they don’t want to go “apartment by apartment”. “They are just blowing down the entire building. So, it is a much more brutal way of doing it. When the US went into Iraq and helped the Iraqi army clear out cities, they would go apartment by apartment. It was very tough, very hard, very long…the Israelis have just knocked down the entire building,” he said. 

Israel, in retaliation to the Hamas attack that killed 1,400 people, has now expanded ground operations in Gaza. Israeli forces targetted Gaza’s main north-south road on Monday and attacked the city from two directions. Hamas militants and Israeli forces clashed on Tuesday morning.

Gaza health authorities have said that 8,306 people, including 3,457 minors, have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7. Over 1.4 million of Gaza's civilian population of about 2.3 million have been made homeless, UN officials said. 

Meanwhile, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that there would be no ceasefire. "Calls for a ceasefire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas, to surrender to terrorism, to surrender to barbarism. That will not happen," Netanyahu said in televised remarks.

Palestinian civilians are in dire need of fuel, food and clean water. The UN humanitarian office (OCHA) said that water supply through a pipeline from Israel to southern Gaza was cut off on Monday and that an announced repair of another pipeline to central Gaza did not take place.

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