The ongoing Israel-Hamas war is unprecedented, experts say. Here are 5 reasons why

Violence in Israel and Palestine escalated in unparalleled ways over the weekend. The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas killed hundreds of Israeli citizens, injured thousands more and kidnapped some as it invaded Israel on Saturday, Oct. 7. In response, Israel increased bombings of the Gaza Strip, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a formal declaration of war.

So far, as of Tuesday, Oct. 10, at least 765 Palestinians have been killed and 4,000 wounded, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. At least 900 Israelis have been killed and 2,741 wounded, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Casualties are expected to rise as armed combat and bombings continue.

At least 11 American citizens are among those killed in Israel, according to U.S. President Joe Biden, who called it an “appalling terrorist assault.”

Here’s how the current Israel-Hamas war is unprecedented for those involved — Palestine, Israel and the international community — in ways that are expected to shape what’s to come as of Oct. 10.

The scale of the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 and Israel’s military ‘failure’

“Hamas launched a very audacious, brutal assault on Saturday (Oct. 7) into Israel,” Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and director of its Israeli-Palestinian Affairs program, told McClatchy News. “No Palestinian group has ever launched an attack like this.”

A large number of armed Hamas fighters breached the heavily fortified border between the Gaza Strip and Israel. They entered by land, sea and air, then temporarily took control of at least 20 Israeli communities near the border, killing hundreds of Israelis and taking more than 100 people back to Gaza as hostages. The exact number of hostages held by Hamas is unclear, but the Israel Defense Forces said it includes civilians and military personnel.

“No one imagined that (Hamas) had the operational capacity to do what they did,” Joel Beinin, a professor of Middle Eastern History at Stanford University, told McClatchy News.

The border fence between Israel and the Gaza Strip has “never been” breached in such a way, Elgindy said, and, “it’s the first time any Palestinian armed force controlled ... anything in Israel since 1948 — since Israel was created.”

Dov Waxman, a professor of Israeli studies at the University of California Los Angeles, told McClatchy News that “the capture of Israeli population centers inside Israel, that’s never taken place before in terms of sovereign Israeli territory.”

As a result of Hamas’ attack, “more Israelis died on that single day than in any day in Israel’s history — and that includes all of Israel’s wars,” Waxman said.

The Oct. 7 attack was “like a role reversal” for Israel, which has occupied Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since 1967, Elgindy said.

“That’s not to justify (the attack),” he said. “That’s just to explain the psychology of what it means, of what a radical, audacious assault it was, especially given Israel is the most powerful military force in the entire region.”

For Israelis, Beinin said, part of the horror of Hamas’ attack was the “complete failure of the (Israeli) intelligence and military apparatus in confronting it.”

Israel cutting off the Gaza Strip entirely

“Israel controls … everything about the Gaza Strip,” Beinin said, and it’s become a “living hell” for the roughly 2 million Palestinians who live in this small area, which is about one-eighth the size of Rhode Island with double the state’s population.

The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli and Egyptian military blockade since 2007 when Hamas, which had called for the destruction of Israel, was elected to a majority of seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council. Israel controls all of Gaza’s borders and the flow of people and goods. As a result of the almost 16-year-long blockade, Gaza has been called an “open-air prison” and was expected to become “unlivable” by 2020. Already 96% of its water is not drinkable, according to UNICEF.

In response to the Hamas attack, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip on Monday, Oct. 9, with a total blockade including food, water, electricity and fuel.

“This goes beyond any measures that Israel has taken, as far as I can recall, in the past toward the Gaza Strip,” Waxman said.

Mohammed Abu-Nimer, a professor of Peace and Conflict Resolution at American University, told McClatchy News that “in the past, Israel has cut electricity … (and) prohibited material to go in Gaza for a few days as a punishment,” but this time Israel is blocking “everything.”

Elgindy also confirmed the unprecedented nature of the blockade, saying he has “never seen anything where food, medicine, fuel, electricity, (and) water, all have been cut. That’s catastrophic.”

“It’s collective punishment on a massive scale,” he said.

The scale of Israel’s response is expected to be unprecedented

“We don’t know yet what the full dimensions of the Israeli response are,” Beinin said. “Everything they have said, everything they’ve done so far in only the last day and a half indicates that this is going to be a massive bloodbath.”

Israel has fired over 4,500 rockets into the Gaza Strip between Saturday and midday Tuesday.

Usually, the Israeli response to Palestinian escalation involves rounds of aerial bombardment, Yousef Munayyer, the head of the Palestine-Israel program at the Arab Center Washington D.C., told McClatchy News. “There is sort of an established playbook, if you will.”

“Israel’s military doctrine,” according to Elgindy, “is based on overwhelming, disproportionate force. That is, whatever blows are suffered on the Israeli side, it will be returned multiple times over in terms of casualties, destruction, and so forth.”

This time, however, Hamas is holding captives, which complicates Israel’s response and may change what sort of response will satisfy the Israeli public, Munayyer said.

Abu-Nimer offered a similar analysis, noting that right now the “Israeli operation has an objective of reestablishing its image and its reputation and what they call its deterrence capacity.”

As a result, many experts expect Israel’s response will be larger, longer and likely deadlier to Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip than past conflicts.

“There’s a war that is growing by the moment,” Waxman said.

A ‘green light’ from Israel’s Western allies

Israel’s Western allies, including the U.S. and the European Union, responded to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack by publicly emphasizing Israel’s right to defend itself, Costanza Musu, a Canadian professor and expert on Israel and Palestine, told McClatchy News.

Previous episodes of conflict between Israel and Palestine were met with more public calls for de-escalation and restraint on Israel’s part, Musu said. “There is something different this time,” she said.

This time, Munayyer said, “(Israel has), I think, the backing from the United States to essentially have the time and space that they need to do whatever they want in the Gaza Strip.”

Among Israel’s Western allies, “there is a sense that there is less concern about civilian casualties today than there has been before,” he said

Munayyer and Elgindy described this response as giving a “green light” to the Israeli military. Elgindy also referred to it as a “complete blank check,” with Abu-Nimer calling it a “green flag.”

Elgindy and Beinin said this support comes amid increased calls for violence by some within Israel. “Part of the danger there is that you have the most extreme government in Israel’s history at the helm,” Elgindy said.

A higher risk of widening into a regional dispute

In response to the Israel-Hamas war, the U.S. sent an aircraft carrier, the world’s largest warship, toward Israel as a form of deterrence. Musu, Beinin and Elgindy said this aimed to deter others from entering the war and signaled how seriously the U.S. considers such a possibility.

The situation in the West Bank between the Israelis and Palestinians remains “very fragile,” Waxman said. Similarly, the situation along the Israel-Lebanon northern border between Israelis and Hezbollah, an armed Islamist group backed by Iran and ally of Hamas, remains “very fragile and developing.”

Although it’s always considered a concerning possibility, “there’s more concern this time that Hezbollah might get involved than in previous rounds of fighting,” he said.

Abu-Nimer gave a similar analysis, saying that “we are still awaiting whether Israel is going to attack Hezbollah” and if the conflict will expand to include Hezbollah and/or Iran.

The movement of a U.S. warship into the region suggests, according to Abu-Nimer, that this is “the closest we have come to a war between Israel and Iran through Hezbollah and Hamas.”

The ongoing Israel-Hamas war, Munayyer said, “is a completely different type of event. Even if it follows some patterns, it’s a very different scale.”

“Nobody knows where this will end,” Elgindy said.

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