Why the Hamas surprise attack on Israel is such a significant strike

The last time there was a prolonged clash between Israel and Hamas, in May 2021, the conflict lasted 11 days, resulting in the deaths of about 250 people in Gaza and 13 in Israel. Yet within hours of the surprise attack launched early Saturday by Hamas against Israel, hundreds had already been killed.

Hamas gunmen rolled into as many as 22 locations outside the Gaza Strip, including towns and other communities, where they roamed for hours. Gun battles continued well after nightfall, and militants held hostages in standoffs in two towns.

In retaliation, Israel launched a series of airstrikes into Gaza, flattening several residential buildings, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that they would inflict an "unprecedented price."

This fight will have far more ramifications than previous clashes, say observers, with Netanyahu also declaring that his country is at war.

CBC News looks at why this attack is such a significant and unprecedented escalation, as well as the possible fallout.

Is this an unprecedented attack?

Some observers have already compared this to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

"This is a really big deal," said Jonathan Panikoff, director of the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative based in Washington, D.C.

"There's always a perpetuation of violence.There's a tit for tat that's happened for years. That's not what this is," he said in an interview with CBC News. "You're hearing a lot of references to 9/11 and to Pearl Harbor by the Israelis. And it feels like that to them." 

Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. in the 1990s, said in an email to CBC News that while the Sept. 11 attacks are comparable, "it's better to describe it as a second Yom Kippur War, 50 years later."

In that conflict, Israel was caught off guard in a surprise attack launched by Arab states in October 1973, during the Jewish holy day.

Certainly the scope and surprise of this attack are shocking to Israel's intelligence community, said Janice Stein, a political science professor at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

"Usually when you plan an attack of this kind and this order of magnitude, you leave some traces," she said. "And this was obviously very, very closely held."

Stein also compared the attack to the Yom Kippur War, which lasted from Oct. 6 to 25. But what is unprecedented, she said, is the targets and the reports that numerous civilians and Israeli soldiers have been taken hostage.

"That would be unprecedented. That's never happened," she said.

WATCH  The latest in the conflict between Israel and Hamas:

Panikoff said it's not the thousands of rockets that have been fired from Gaza into Israel that's so shocking but that this was an incredibly complex attack that had to have been planned for months in advance.

"[You had] quite literally three different variations of Hamas [militants] infiltrating Israel by land through fencing, by sea and by air, using paragliders."

Why attack now?

According to Mohammed Deif, the leader of Hamas's military wing, the assault was in response to the continued blockade of Gaza; Israeli raids inside occupied West Bank cities over the past year; increasing attacks by settlers on Palestinians; continued growth of settlements; and violence at the Al-Aqsa mosque — the disputed Jerusalem holy site sacred to Jews as the Temple Mount.

But experts say there are likely other reasons the militant group launched this assault.

Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the attack may be designed in part to distract from criticism Hamas has faced over both its administration of the Gaza Strip and the lack of force it's shown against Israel.

"This is kind of flipping the table," he said.

Richard LeBaron, a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's Middle East Programs and a former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Israel, said the attack, like others before it, draws attention to the fact that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has not been resolved. As well, it also highlights that many Palestinians believe the situation is worse under Netanyahu's right-wing government, he wrote.

"The Hamas attacks will earn the group a good deal of respect among Palestinians on the West Bank, where some may be inspired to launch less dramatic attacks," he wrote on the Atlantic Council's website.

The U of T's Stein said she believes the immediate trigger for this was the ongoing negotiations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to have Saudi Arabia normalize relations with Israel in exchange for a U.S. defence pact.

An agreement, she said, threatens to marginalize the Palestinians but also put Iran, which is Hamas's biggest supporter, at a disadvantage. "A security treaty between Saudi Arabia and the United States is clearly not what Iran wants to happen," she said.

How significant, then, is this attack?

Although this newest conflict is just in its first day, it has potential, in terms of significance, to be as important as the second intifada, Byman said. The conflict, which lasted from Sept. 28, 2000 to Feb. 8, 2005, resulted in the deaths of about 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis.

Netanyahu has already promised to "exact a huge price," the Atlantic Council's Panikoff said, adding that the Israeli leader will have little interest in backing down from that vow.

"I do think that foreshadows what I expect to be a fairly heavy airstrike and air campaign. Does that mean a massive ground invasion as well?"

Stein said there's no doubt the conflict is enormously significant on several fronts but that much will depend on the broader political fallout once the fighting is over.

For Stein, there are three issues: Does this escalate and how badly does it end; how much of an impact will this have on negotiations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia; and what does it mean for the fate of the Netanyahu government?

"It's a massive [intelligence] failure," she said. "And that's why I think there will ultimately be consequences for the government."