U.S. pledges military aid to Israel as experts weigh motivations for Hamas attack
Internal, external geopolitics may have caused Israel to overlook Hamas attack plans
The U.S. is moving their Ford carrier strike group, consisting of a deck of warplanes and about 5,000 sailors, to the Eastern Mediterranean in a show of force meant to assist Israel, after a surprise attack by Hamas and subsequent retaliation by Israel has left over 1,000 dead and thousands wounded on both sides.
The large deployment, which also includes a host of ships and warplanes, was authorized after the Israeli government formally declared war Sunday and gave the green light for "significant military steps" to retaliate against Hamas.
In addition, the Biden administration "will be rapidly providing the Israel Defense Forces with additional equipment and resources, including munitions. The first security assistance will begin moving today and arriving in the coming days," said U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. was trying to verify reports that several Americans were killed and some were taken captive by Hamas.
Global Affairs Canada said there are reports one Canadian in the region has died and two others are missing.
"Canadian government officials in Israel are in contact with local authorities to confirm and gather additional information," Global Affairs said in a statement.
The agency said it has received over 400 inquiries about the fighting. It said 1,419 Canadians are registered with the voluntary Registration of Canadians Abroad in the state of Israel and 492 Canadians are registered in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Political leaders across Canada have publicly affirmed their support of Israel.
"Canada strongly condemns the current terrorist attacks against Israel," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday on X, formerly known as Twitter. "These acts of violence are completely unacceptable. We stand with Israel and fully support its right to defend itself."
Home to some two million people, the Gaza Strip has been ruled by Hamas since 2007. Its economy has long been choked by a blockade imposed by Israel with Egypt's help.
Over the past year, Israel's far-right government has ramped up settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, Israeli settler violence has displaced hundreds of Palestinians there and tensions have flared around the Al-Aqsa mosque, a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site.
Israeli media say Hamas attacks killed at least 700 Israelis, and the Palestinian Ministry of Health says 413 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli retaliation. According to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees, there are 73,538 displaced people sheltering in 64 schools.
Possible motivations
The leader of Hamas's military wing, Mohammed Deif, said this surprise assault was in response to the 16-year blockade of Gaza as well as recent escalations by Israel.
According to Blinken, part of the motivation for Hamas's latest attack on Israel may have been to disrupt a potential normalizing of Israel-Saudi Arabia ties.
"It wouldn't be a surprise that part of the motivation may have been to disrupt efforts to bring Saudi Arabia and Israel together, along with other countries that may be interested in normalizing relations with Israel," Blinken told CNN in an interview on Sunday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month he believed his country was on the cusp of peace with Saudi Arabia, predicting it could reshape the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam's two holiest shrines, has long insisted on the Palestinians' right to statehood as a condition of recognizing Israel — something many members of Netanyahu's nationalist religious coalition have long resisted.
Now, Dr. Sajjan Gohel, international security director at the Asia-Pacific Foundation, told CBC, Saudi Arabia's leadership cannot stay silent on Israeli attacks on Palestinians, thereby threatening the burgeoning Saudi-Israeli alliance.
"And President Biden has been putting Prime Minister Netanyahu under pressure to concede more territory for a potential Palestinian deal that would involve also Saudi Arabia and Israel forming ties," Gohel said. "That is now all up in the air."
The situation was further complicated after Lebanon-based Hezbollah claimed responsibility for strikes on northern Israeli positions Sunday morning, in a disputed area along the border with Syria's Golan Heights. Israel's military responded with armed drone strikes on Hezbollah targets in a disputed area where the borders of Israel, Lebanon and Syria meet.
"The question I guess is that will non-state actors like Hezbollah continue carrying out further activities to test Israel's ability to react on two fronts?" Gohel said.
The fact that Hamas's assault — from land through fencing, by sea and by air with paragliders — evaded detection, despite constant Israeli surveillance of the region, is "an intelligence failure at an unprecedented scale," according to Gohel.
The operation was carried out by the Al-Qassam brigade, the military wing of Hamas, and Gohel said it must have been in planning for weeks, if not months.
He said Hamas's control of the Gaza strip as well as Israel's own internal political divisions brought on by Netanyahu's judicial overhaul may have caused a gap in intelligence. This overhaul would curtail the Israeli Supreme Court's powers and protesters worried this would leave a weakened democracy.
"For the past 10 months, we've seen tens of thousands of Israelis protesting, including many reservists who have refused to take part in active service, which includes Israel's intelligence agencies, such as Mossad and Shin Bet," Dr. Gohel said. "That has definitely impacted Israel's ability to monitor how Hamas has been able to operate."
No way out
In retaliation to the Hamas attacks and hostages, Israel has cut off the supply of electricity, fuel and goods to Gaza, and has been conducting regular airstrikes into the territory.
The Israeli military also issued warnings in Arabic early Sunday, telling Palestinian residents of communities near the Israel-Gaza border to leave their homes and move to areas deeper inside the tiny enclave.
"There's no way out [of Gaza]," said Ramsey Zeid, president of the Canadian Palestinian Association of Manitoba, in a televised interview with CBC News. "There's only one way in for everything, for medical supplies, for food or water, and that's all regularly cut off whenever Israel feels like it. It's a really bad situation for people living in Gaza."
The leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, Ziad Nakhaleh, said his group, which participated in the attack, is holding more than 30 Israelis, among dozens he said were captive in Gaza. On Sunday, senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk told the Arabic-language news outlet al-Ghad that the group is holding more than 100 people captive.
Nakhaleh said hostages would not be released until all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are freed, referring to Israel's detention of over 1,200 prisoners, mostly Palestinians, without charges.
Israel said the controversial tactic is necessary to contain dangerous militants and avoid divulging incriminating material for security reasons. But Palestinians and human rights groups say the system denies due process and is widely abused.
Gohel said he is mainly concerned about hostages taken by Hamas who are primarily Israeli but could have dual citizenship.
"That will also involve other countries potentially getting involved, so it's absolutely critical that those civilians are released by Hamas because only keeping them further ... doesn't actually help resolve any of the problems that are miring the region right now."
With U.S. and Canadian politicians expressing unequivocal support for Israel's right to defend itself, Palestinians like Zeid hope for acknowledgment of Palestinian lives as well, against the backdrop of decades of Israeli occupation.
"It all seems really one-sided," Zeid said. "There's a lot of humanitarian organizations around the world [like] Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch that have gone into Palestine and Israel, and ... have called Israel an apartheid state...and for some reason, [U.S. and Canada] just ignore these reports."
With files from Reuters and CBC News