From Oslo to Be’eri: how the 30-years-long peace delusion led to Hamas’s 10/7 massacres

Abstract

The failure to prevent Hamas’s slaughter of some 1,300 Israelis on 7 October 2023–the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust–is a direct result of an emergency phone consultation three hours before the terror group’s invasion of Israel with the participation of the IDF’s and Shin Bet’s top leaders, who decided to do nothing despite acute warning signals and failed to alert the Gaza division commander and the political echelon to the imminent attack. Had they taken the minimal precautionary measures, the catastrophe would have been averted altogether. To fully understand the mindset underlying this monumental blunder requires tracing its evolution within the context of the 30-years-long Oslo peace delusion in general, and during the turbulent year preceding the 10/7 massacres in particular. That is: the substitution of a grand strategic deception aimed at Israel’s destruction for a true peace process and the attendant emasculation of the IDF’s military capabilities and combative/offensive ethos, on the one hand, and the unravelling of Israel’s sociopolitical fabric that culminated in the 2023 mass civil disobedience that enticed Hamas into action, on the other. Even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who opposed the Oslo process from the outset and managed to neutralise its most catastrophic potential calamity–the establishment of a Palestinian state committed to Israel’s destruction in the West Bank and Gaza–failed to extricate Israel from this disastrous course and was ironically forced to bear its full brunt on 7 October 2023.