Given that the conflict is in a relatively cold state.
I want to explore the mistakes that lead to how the conflict played out.
Israel unilateraly withdrawn from gaza in 2005.
Israel used to control gaza up to 2005 , they had settlements with 8,475 Israeli living in these gaza settlements
In 2005 Israel withdrew completely from gaza, removing all the Israeli settlements from the region
The withdrawal effectively Kickstarted the dinmo that eventually lead to 7th October.
The reason of the withdrawal
Sharon was concerned about the high birth rate of Palestinians in the relatively small area of gaza, (from his point of view) protecting the Israeli settlements will become more and more difficult and expensive year by year , (from his point of view) protecting the settlements now might be feasible against almost 2 million gazans, but if the demographic trends continued how would Israel protect the settlements against 10 million gazans?
hamas reaction to the withdrawal
hamas were extremely happy about that , to the point of some gazans shekhs banning the killing of Israeli soldiers(fearing the killings might delay the withdrawal).
the immediate consequences of the withdrawal
An election was held in "Palestine" and hamas won the the election(the elections were legitimate and democratic btw).
The results (shockingly) shocked Israel and the west, they wondered "why did the Palestinian electe the jehadis who declared war on all jews and loved hitler over fatah , fatah just wanted to kill Israelis not all jews , fatah were (relative to hamas) secular"
The election Kickstarted a civil war that hamas won in gaza.
how did hamas benefit from the Israeli withdrawal
hamas used gaza as a base of operation.
They started to openly recruit soldier.
They started digging up the tunnels
The rocket attacks has increased in quantity and quality(beforethe withdrawalthe rockets attack were useless).
October 7th beta version or 2006 Hamas cross-border raid
Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades(the dudes who later did October 7th) did something unprecedented, through a tunnel they crossed into Israeli territory and attacked IDF border positions ,
in the process they captured Gilad Shalit
Hamas used only 7 to 8 soldiers to do that entire operation.
this event was so unprecedented that shalit didn't shoot at the hamas members when he saw them and surrendered when they drew their guns at him without a thought.
In response
Israel launched an operation to rescue shalit, failed miserably.
After said failure
Israel and hamas agreed on a prisoner exchange deal.
Gilad Shalit in exchange of 1027 PALESTINIAN TERRORISTS , among them sinwar(the guy who practically was hamas leader in October 7th)
this event taught hamas a couple of things.
1-Israel is extremely vulnerable to tunnel attacks
2- capturing Israelis is extremely valuable.
3- Israel has failed to rescue shalit , so that proved the tunnels effectiveness for hiding hostages
4- Israeli bombing won't be severe, in fear of accidentally killing shalit.
This inspired hamas and their primary supporters (iran) to draw plans to repeat the success of the crossing, but this time it won't be just 7 hamas members, but this time they won't just kill tow soldiers and take one hostage, but this time they won't retreat after the initial attacks.
This plan eventually became "طوفان الأقصى" October 7th.
in conclusion.
Israel's mistakes were as such
1 - withdrawal from gaza
2 - docile and weak reaction to hamas rocket attacks
3 - giving the Palestinians an incentive to terrorize the Israelis(the attacks in the west bank increased in hopes of forcing Israel into another withdrawal) after all terrorism is why they withdrew from gaza in the first place.
4 - not derailing the tunnel building process that hamas was engaged in, and failings to secure the border with gaza.
5 - giving the Palestinians an incentive to capture as many hostages as possible (after all hamas gained tremendously from capturing just one random dude)
6 - failing to rescue Gilad Shalit (basically proving the tunnels effectiveness)
7 - not bombing gaza due to the fear of accidently killing shalit(giving even more incentive to capture hostages)
8 - not punishing hamas for the capture of shalit, after exchanging shalit for the thousand terrorists Israel did nothing to deterre hamas from trying that again.
9 - using Israeli corpses to exchange terrorists , by exchanging terrorist for dead bodys Israel gave hamas no good reason not to kill the hostages (after all they are still valuable without their soul)
10 - not showing the atrocities of 7th October, similar mistake to what America did after 9/11 (most people have no idea of how brutal the attacks were , the images in thier mind is just "tow planes hitting tow buildings" not the thousands of dead people dying from them(footage of people dying was never released).
