Hamas and Islamic Jihad made a serious calculation error. Like their predecessors, they have become accustomed to seeing specific responses, if any. Like their predecessors, they have crossed the red line, and they will see Israel, the "old giant," awaken in full force in the coming days.
During four rounds of fighting – 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021 – the terrorists in Gaza mistakenly thought they had studied us closely. They knew a country that was willing to hijack hundreds, if not thousands, of missiles and mortar shells. A country that is willing to return fire mainly from the air, and to bring in ground forces only near Gaza's border, not to its core. They knew an Israel that was willing to pay a fortune in Qatar or buy industrial quiet in Gaza for a few years.
They knew Israel, which is willing to release more than a thousand terrorists from Israeli prisons in exchange for one kidnapped IDF soldier, and is even willing to conduct lengthy negotiations over the return of the bodies of soldiers killed in Gaza. They knew Israel well, or so they thought. They knew Israel, but they may have miscalculated and therefore fell into the same trap as our enemies in the past.
Direct hit in Tel Aviv, photo: Erez Lin
Damage to Beitar Illit // Photo: Fire and Rescue Service Spokesperson's Office
This is what happened to Egyptian President Jamal Abdel Nasser in May 1967 during the Six-Day War. Nasser expelled the UN forces from Sinai and saw that Israel had done nothing. Nasser brought the Egyptian army into the Sinai Peninsula, and once again, saw that Israel had done nothing. Convinced that Israel would remain passive as in the past, Nasser escalated and closed the Strait of Tiran. In addition, he forged strategic anti-Israel alliances with Jordan and Syria. In retrospect, it turned out that the Egyptian leader had gone one step too far and finally, on the morning of June 5, woke up to the news that the Israeli Air Force had destroyed almost all of his planes.
The Syrians and Egyptians miscalculated
In 5 out of 6 days of that war, the Syrians dropped thousands of shells on Israeli communities in the Galilee. The Syrians miscalculated, and eventually launched an Israeli counterattack that drove them completely out of the Golan Heights.
Nasser, Photo: GettyImages
Just as Nasser did, so did Yasser Arafat. In October 2000, after rejecting then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's proposal for a solution to establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and half of Jerusalem, Arafat launched the second intifada. For a year and a half, he gave the green light to Palestinian suicide bombers to murder hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians. Israel, in response, restrained itself and did not return fire significantly.
Until the moment of the horrific Passover Seder attack at the Park Hotel in Netanya, in which 30 Israeli civilians were murdered. Arafat, like Nasser before him, went one step too far, and Prime Minister Arik Sharon's response to Operation Defensive Shield was not long in coming.
Demolitions in Gaza following IDF strikes, photo: AP.
"We woke up a sleeping giant," said Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who commanded the Japanese attack on the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Israel, like the United States on the eve of World War II, is a sleeping giant. It is not easy to awaken us, but when we wake up, the power and strength are enormous.
In a series of brutal attacks on residents of the south, Hamas and Islamic Jihad repeated the same mistake as Nasser and Arafat. They went one step too far. They have become accustomed to the sleeping Israeli giant, and now they will have to deal with the awake giant in full force. The people of Israel are strong and cohesive, and above all – aware and alert to its mission to defend itself and its right to exist.
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