Under the Gaza Strip, Hamas dug a labyrinth of tunnels, a veritable spider’s web in which weapons, ammunition, and recently the civilians kidnapped on October 7 were hidden.

Hamas has always been clear about its intentions: the complete destruction of the State of Israel. Coexistence was never an option. Its founding charter of 1988 was already filled with phrases that expressed it in the language of religious hatred: “Israel will exist and will exist until Islam destroys it, just as it has destroyed others before”; “Doomsday will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews. Until the Jews hide behind mountains and trees, which will shout: “O Muslims! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him!” The massacre of civilians and the kidnapping of innocents committed a few weeks ago is only the latest manifestation of this heinous ideology that mixes hatred, anti-Semitism, religion and politics.

But it’s worth asking what the goal of Hamas’ latest attack was. Was it just the product of blind rage, with no purpose other than to cause pain and death? Or, on the contrary, was it a strategic maneuver, calculated to provoke Israel into causing a humanitarian and geopolitical catastrophe? The second option seems more likely, and Hamas’ strategy seems to be working. Since October 7, more than 7,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli bombings, of which an estimated 3,000 were children. They have already far exceeded the 1,400 victims of Hamas. The horror of that first Islamist attack was overshadowed by the brutality of Israeli repression. Rivers of blood flow through gauze.

The defenders of Israel will answer that Hamas is also to blame, because it is known that this terrorist organization uses hospitals, schools and other civilian facilities as military bases, precisely to turn innocent people into “human shields”. But that’s the point. Hamas wants Israel to cause the greatest number of “martyrs” whose blood will provoke the indignation of the international community and the wrath of the Islamic world. The ultimate goal? For starters, destroy the possibility of nations like Saudi Arabia normalizing their relations with Israel and “force” giants like Iran to intervene in the conflict. Ultimately, causing a “domino effect” in the geopolitics of the region that culminates in an apocalyptic war in which Israel is finally wiped off the map.

Israel is passing through a minefield. The fact that Hamas hides among civilians does not exempt Israel from its moral and international law obligation to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. Bombings like the one in the Jabalia refugee camp can hardly be justified, even if they led to the death of Ibrahim Biari, one of the Hamas commanders. And that is the ultimate strategy of the terrorist organization: to make Israel enter and lose itself in its labyrinth, and never come out again. (OR)