What Israel has in store for Hamas

Sam Hawley: Hi, I’m Sam Hawley, coming to you from Gadigal Land. This is ABC News Daily. It took just 48 hours for the death toll to rise to over 1,000. And it’s only going to grow as Israel responds to the surprise attack by Hamas militants. For decades, there’s been hope of a peace deal. But now Israel has declared war with more than 100 of its citizens also taken hostage. So why is this happening now and how can it be stopped? Today, the ABC’s global affairs editor John Lyons, on the unprecedented attack, the history of the disputed territory and why he believes there’s still hope for peace. John, you lived in Jerusalem for six years. So you really do know this story inside out, don’t you?

John Lyons: Well, Sam, that time in Jerusalem allowed me to get a really good slice of life and culture and the way people think in Jerusalem, which is obviously one of the most contested cities in the world.

Sam Hawley: John, just take me back to Saturday night when this attack began to unfold. The world was not expecting this. It was a shock, wasn’t it? And it’s unprecedented what’s happening now.

John Lyons: That’s right. I think that the operation must have been months in the planning. It was very well planned. The fact that the Israelis had not a hint of it says a lot about their failure of intelligence. I don’t think they have very good human intelligence out of Gaza. They do out of the other Palestinian territory, the West Bank, where I believe they have as many as 20,000 paid informants across the West Bank. But the Gaza is a much tougher nut to crack because it is blocked off, it is isolated, you can’t really get in or out. Israelis are not allowed to go to Gaza, for example. It’s really sealed off.

Sam Hawley: Yeah, and there’s barricades up everywhere, isn’t it? So these militants, they really had to get through those barricades to get into Israel.

John Lyons: That’s right. I mean, when I’ve been through there, you go through the Erez crossing, the main checkpoint, Israeli army checkpoint, It’s this massive concrete structure. And you never see people. It’s microphones. Open your bag, put it on the table, Security like you’ve never seen before. My belief now, having talked to people, is that it was a Jewish holiday. It was planned. And of course, like in Thanksgiving in the US, for many of the high holidays in Israel, often this younger soldiers, the 18, 19, 20 year olds go back to their family homes for the lunches, for the dinners and turn their mobile phones off. It’s 50 years since the Yom Kippur War when, of course, the Arab states jumped Israel knowing that they were observing Yom Kippur. Israel learnt from that, and when I was there, the soldiers would say to me, never again, we’re always going to be on alert. Something went badly wrong because even when Hamas was able to get into southern Israel, they were then able to run rampant for hours, hours and hours. That terrible massacre they did at the music festival, going from apartment building to apartment building, shooting at civilian cars. Israel’s got the strongest army in the Middle East. And my question, Sam, is where were they?

Sam Hawley: And you mentioned that music festival near the Gaza border. Israel says there’s 260 dead. And John, there’s that absolutely chilling video from the festival of a young Israeli couple being dragged away by militants… A young woman driven away on a motorbike… It’s awful.

John Lyons: Of course. To me, and I’ve said this about Russia with Ukraine, targeting of civilians, of any civilians is a war crime, in my view. This in my view, this was by Hamas, a massive war crime for which they should be accountable. These people were young people, like our kids who went off to the desert to enjoy a festival. They were not armed. They were not combatants. They were not standing next to a military facility. They were killed in cold blood and many of them taken back to Gaza. So this is horrifying and this will shake Israel to the core, but it will also make the Netanyahu government believe that they now have a mandate for the worst pounding Gaza’s ever seen.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel: We are at war, not an operation, not rounds, but at war. This morning, Hamas opened a murderous surprise attack against the state of Israel and its citizens. We are in it since early this morning.

Sam Hawley: Benjamin Netanyahu, he has declared the nation is at war and he said he would turn Hamas strongholds into rubble.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel: In addition, I ordered a wide call for reservists to fight back with might and scope that the enemy did not know the enemy will pay a price. He did not know until now.

John Lyons: My thoughts are also with all the people in Gaza who are not supporters of Hamas, and there are many I’ve run into them when I was there. There was a woman who was near the border, a Palestinian woman, who was very angry with these guys who were in the side street. There were some Hamas guys in this yurt and they had a missile. She’s angry. She’s telling them to go away, to go somewhere else, because every time a missile fired from from Gaza, Israel, with its drones and its cameras and everything hits the spot from which it was fired. That’s their policy to discourage people doing it. And her view was, you’ve come into my street, my neighbourhood, and you’re going to deliver upon us and Israeli strike a missile hitting here. And so there are people inside Gaza who do not like Hamas.

Sam Hawley: An Al Jazeera journalist was broadcasting from Gaza as an Israeli airstrike hit nearby.

Al Jazeera newsreader: All right, Youmna. Please take cover.

Youmna El Sayed, journalist: No, it’s okay. This is a missile attack on… on Palestine Tower.

Sam Hawley: As you say, it’s terrifying for the citizens of Gaza. A spokesman for the Israeli Defence Forces, Jonathan Conricus, was on Radio National Breakfast.

Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus: We’ll strike back at Hamas. At their military targets, and there will be pictures of suffering in Gaza. Please remember how this started. It started with an unprovoked attack against our civilians and we had civilians executed in their homes.

Sam Hawley: So let’s step back a moment, John, for a quick history lesson, because this can get confusing. Tell me more about Hamas. It was founded in 1987. Why? What was its purpose?

John Lyons: That’s right. It was founded as a, quote, resistance movement to Israel’s occupation of the two Palestinian territories, the West Bank and Gaza. So its entire mantra, its entire raison d’etre is to end the occupation. Its charter actually formally talks about eradicating Israel. It doesn’t believe in the state of Israel, in the existence of the state of Israel, which makes it very difficult for Israel to make any peace deal with an organisation that that doesn’t even acknowledge your right to exist. And it took control of Gaza. And there’s another big faction there, Islamic Jihad, and there’s eight separate Salafist groups inside Gaza. I mean, Gaza’s a political mess as well as a physical mess. So you’ve got these eight other Salafist groups who are more hardline than Hamas. These groups are always pressuring Hamas to be more hardline, to be more violent. So there’ll be periods where Hamas there’s relative quiet, where Hamas is sometimes saying to Islamic Jihad, don’t fire rockets because we’ve got a ceasefire. So it just shows you the depth of the problem. If Hamas is seen as one of the more moderate of the groups, you can imagine what the others are like.

Sam Hawley: Yeah, world leaders, of course, particularly American leaders, have tried to bring about peace in this conflict over many decades. George W Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama.

Barack Obama, former US President: Despite all the obstacles, despite all the history, despite all the mistrust, we have to find a way forward.

Bill Clinton, former US President: And to work for a shared future shaped by the values of the Torah, the Koran and the Bible.

George W Bush, former US President: And now comes a moment of choice. A Palestinian state will never be created by terror.

Sam Hawley: They’ve tried to bring peace, but it seems like nobody can do that.

John Lyons: That’s right. I mean, brief history, of course, 1947, Australia was actually a leader in the formation of the state of Israel. The United Nations General Assembly in 1947 was working out what to do with what used to be called the British partition will divide it up. The UN agreed into a Jewish state and an Arab state Palestine. From 1967, there was a war there between Israel and many of its neighbours. Israel won the war and then occupied what had been designated as that Arab state, Palestine. The West Bank and Gaza. And then Israel withdrew from Gaza because it was just too hard, too difficult. But they’ve kept the West Bank, where there’s 3 million Palestinians who now live under Israeli military occupation, which means the Israeli army is the ultimate authority there. To me, the only solution to this problem is what the President of Turkey, Erdogan, has said. He says that a two state solution is a necessity that can no longer be delayed. My view is there has to be a political solution. It can’t keep going on this way.

Sam Hawley: John, around the world, we’ve seen pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrations, including in Sydney’s west…

Pro-Palestinian protester: Occupation is the cry: Occupation is the cry. Free, free Palestine

Sam Hawley: World leaders have condemned the attack on Israel.

Joe Biden, US President: The United States stands with Israel. We will not ever fail to have their back.

Sam Hawley: From Joe Biden to Anthony Albanese… Our Foreign Minister Penny Wong.

Penny Wong, Foreign Affairs Minister: I expressed Australia’s support for Israel, our solidarity and our support for Israel’s right to defend itself.

Sam Hawley: But Hamas, it has allies too.. What backing does it have? Who’s behind it?

John Lyons: Well, Hamas obviously- there have also been the demonstrations in in other places, as you say, like in Iran, in Tehran, Lebanon. Any countries that are opposed to either Israel or the United States like to, you know, latch on to Hamas. And the northern border, the big party to watch is Hezbollah, which means basically Iran. Iran’s proxies in Lebanon, Hezbollah, if they decide from the northern border to attack Israel, then this escalates into a whole new level.

Sam Hawley: Well, John, the world, of course, we’re shocked by this. But tell me, should we really be surprised?

John Lyons: Not really. The cycle of violence here. This has all been coming for a long time. Let’s come up with a political solution. No, get other people to help you with it for sure. The Arab states should be helping. Saudi Arabia should be helping to broker a deal. Because, you know, there’s always been conflicts in the past where people have said, oh, they’ll never be- remember the orange and the green in Ireland? They said, that’ll never be solved or South Africa will never be solved. Surely all conflicts can be solved if the right people of goodwill and leadership do it. But at the moment, we don’t have the right constellation of the stars.

Sam Hawley: John Lyons is the ABC’s global affairs editor. He’s heading to Israel to cover the conflict. Australians are being urged not to travel to Gaza or bordering areas. This episode was produced by Bridget Fitzgerald, Laura Corrigan and Anna John, who also did the mix. Our supervising producer is David Coady. You can find all our episodes of the podcast on the ABC Listen app. I’m Sam Hawley. ABC News Daily will be back again tomorrow. Thanks for listening.