By Chester Cabalza, Joshua Bernard Espeña, Miguel Hermo
The Covid-19 pandemic temporarily silenced active terrorist organizations around the world, but as many nations reopened after global lockdowns with successful exit strategies, festive Israel was under siege by Islamist militant group Hamas on October 7 killing more than 900 Israelis and 687 Palestinians with thousands injured.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have successfully cleared Israeli cities of Hamas elements and staged a combined air and ground counteroffensive operation—Operation Swords of Iron—in the Gaza Strip.
While Tel Aviv has turned the tide quickly against the extreme Islamist front, it is apt not to allow adversaries to have free hits from the start before striking back; taking a few hits may be acceptable for winning optics of sympathy in the short-term, but it can be a sign of political weakness in the long term.
More so, failure on intelligence and grave miscalculation from Israel’s Mossad, arguably one of the most sophisticated human and electronic intelligence gathering networks in the Middle East, was seen as one reason for the massacre.
The Philippine embassy in Tel Aviv called for cancellation of flights to the Holy Land and recommended that mandatory repatriation could be stalled yet in spite of two deaths and 11 missing Filipinos due to the escalating conflict after thousands of rockets were fired toward southern and central Israel that even reached Jerusalem and Israel’s capital.
Manila immediately condemned the attacks to myriad civilians and conveyed its deepest sympathies and condolences to bereaved families in recent assaults, in which Israel hosts around 30,000 Filipinos, predominantly working as caregivers in Tel Aviv and Haifa—at only around 70 kilometers away from the Gaza Strip where Hamas instigated an attack on neighboring Israeli towns.
In light of IDF’s retaliation to militant Hamas in Gaza Strip, Filipino Muslim communities mostly in southern Philippines remain resilient and vigilant of the situation as they are monitoring updates in the troubled land of milk and honey. A spill over of terrorism neither in the Philippines nor Southeast Asia is unclear. However, Manila can learn two things as it employs the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) from internal security to external defense: first, enemies will fight in multiple domains as possible; second, to never underestimate their capability to do it.
A few weeks before the attack, an unnamed Egyptian intelligence official told the media that Israel did not heed the warning signals of an impending attack, and therefore, underestimated what was about to come. Although Netanhayu himself dismissed the official’s claim as “fake news” on Twitter, media outlets also reported that several defense, intelligence, and IDF officials believed that Hamas would and could never stage a conventional warfare-like attack in the open.
Alberta Wohlsletter’s seminal work Warning and Decision discussed how surprise can happen because political leaders might set the policy agenda and priority elsewhere vis-à-vis the overwhelming signals received in the intelligence feed. For instance, Israelis have likely dismissed such actionable intelligence due to the political optimism that Hamas would favor negotiation with Israel with Saudi’s help. With this challenge inherent in any belligerent entities, ancient strategist Sun Tzu, therefore, pointed out that to win, one has to attack where is unprepared and unexpected.
Hamas’ quick offensive in Southern Israel showed how vulnerable Tel Aviv is based on the political priority of concentrating the IDF’s mass somewhere other than near the Gaza Strip to roads in Southern Israel. Moreover, the underestimation is found in the lack of formidable ground presence to secure said territories and has been compensated with its Iron Dome air defense system instead. If memory serves, the Iron Dome was instrumental in repelling Hamas swarms of rocket attacks on Israeli cities back in 2021. Netanyahu himself revealed this flaw when he announced the last objective of the Swords of Iron operation: “reinforce other fronts so that nobody should mistakenly join this war” after “exacting immense price” on Hamas within Gaza.
While a series of military victories is a sure way to gain a reputation in defense communities, it can also be a source of knee-jerk underestimation. As the Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz said, war it is a dialectic struggle of extremes. That means both sides are willing to use everything at their disposal to wear down the physical and moral force until the other capitulates.
Hamas successfully designed a “shock and horror” multidomain offensive operation in Southern Israel. While Hamas’ rocket swarms have exhausted the Iron Dome System and kept the IDF busy, Hamas has also employed paraglide forces to infiltrate nearby Israeli military bases in Gaza bulldozed the wall separating Palestine and Israeli territories, and used to inflict blitzkrieg-like attacks in Israeli cities, resulting in murder and kidnapping of Israeli civilians and uniformed personnel alike. By dismissing the possibility of the enemies’ multi-domain capability, the surprise turned into shock, which then crippled the decision-making loop for the first phase of the conflict.
Indeed, Israelis have been resilient; it is close to achieving almost the same victory like before. However, it is questionable whether resiliency is something that the Philippines can afford, with the AFP still on its knees to modernize itself to fight in multiple domains against an adversary with a clear-cut intention to dominate the maritime space it holds dearly.
If the crisis situation in Israel escalates, it could lead to a decrease of migrant Filipino workers in the Middle East—as well as possible recalibration of Filipinos to areas away from the heart of conflict. Although repatriation may be considered in the long run if the carnage turns to unexcused violent extremism and terrorism. While the majority of the migrant workers are outside the danger zone, the imminence of danger still lingers—as evidenced by the missing and injured Filipinos.
Dr. Chester Cabalza – Founding president of the Manila-based think tank International Development and Security Cooperation (IDSC) and co-author of The Rise of Philippinedization: Philippinedization is not Finlandization (2021).
Joshua Bernard Espeña – Resident fellow of IDSC, lecturer at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, and co-author of The Rise of Philippinedization: Philippinedization is not Finlandization (2021).
Miguel Hermo – Resident fellow of the IDSC. His research interests include Indo-Pacific geopolitics, US-China rivalry, and international peace and security.
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights)
Photo credit: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun)