Hamas’s daring dawn attack began with rocket fire from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel. At the same time, the Palestinian militant group sent armed drones, motorcycle fighters and paragliders across the Gaza Strip border, targeting civilian towns and military checkpoints.

Footage on social media showed Israeli civilians – who should have been sleeping or resting on Shabbat, Israel’s day of rest – fleeing for their lives through the fields.

Hamas’s deadly, carefully planned and multifaceted operation unleashed Israel’s worst nightmare: Civilians find themselves on the front lines of a protracted conflict when their homes become war zones.

Israeli analysts described the attack as the worst on Jewish state territory since 1948 – the year the state was founded. At least 70 people were killed in Israel and Hamas held an unknown number of hostages.

According to Gaza health officials, nearly 200 Palestinians were killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza.

This is a pivotal moment for Israel, a country acutely aware of its vulnerability to hostile forces, but has long prided itself on the ability of its security and intelligence agencies to predicting and crushing threats against its borders.

The possibility of Hamas launching a carefully planned attack from the borders of the impoverished and besieged Gaza Strip, which is surrounded by Israeli fences and military checkpoints, represents a defeat. Massive intelligence would send waves of shock – and fear – through Israeli society.

This recalls the 1973 war, when Egypt and Syria surprised Israel by leading an Arab offensive in Sinai and the Golan Heights on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day. It is no coincidence that Hamas launched the attack as the 50th anniversary of that war approached.

But Saturday’s attack took place in Israel and civilians were targeted, even though in 1973 Sinai and the Golan Heights were under Israeli occupation.

Despite having fought at least four wars with Hamas since the group took control of Gaza in 2007, Israel clearly underestimated the rebels’ capabilities.

The most recent conflict took place in 2021, when Hamas fired rocket after rocket into Israel, surprising Israeli security officials with their scale and scope.

Israel responded by attacking Gaza with air and artillery strikes and ended up fighting on multiple fronts. Communal violence erupted between Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and their Jewish neighbors, protesters in the occupied West Bank clashed with Israeli security forces and Palestinian factions in Lebanon fired missiles into northern Israel.

More than 250 Palestinians, including women and children, were killed in the 11-day conflict, while 13 people were killed in Israel.

This outbreak of violence is poised to get much worse; Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israel in just a few hours.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the head of the most extreme right-wing government in the country’s history, taking office with a promise to take a tougher line on security. Extremists in his coalition will likely push for a tougher response.

The rebels holding Israeli hostages will only add fuel to the fire as the government desperately tries to release them.

Israeli security analysts warn that the Jewish state could choose to launch a full-scale invasion of Gaza to try to crush Hamas, which has repeatedly sought to replenish its military and weapons stockpiles. air after being bombarded from the air, on the ground and at sea.

It would be the first ground attack in the densely populated strip of 2 million people since the 2014 war and would cause greater losses for all sides – and even more devastation for civilians. People are suffering in Gaza since a long time.

There is also the risk of escalation that could trigger a broader conflict if the Lebanese militia movement Hezbollah coordinates with Hamas and opens a front on Israel’s northern border. This would be a disaster for the region. Iran-backed Hezbollah has a much larger and more sophisticated rocket and missile arsenal than Hamas, which tends to rely on homemade rockets.

Its entry into the conflict would threaten to overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, which protects its cities. Hezbollah shed blood on Israel during a month-long conflict in 2006 and gained on-the-ground experience after intervening in Syria’s civil war to support President Bashar al-Assad.

Israel has long warned that it would respond to any serious attack by Hezbollah with massive force against Lebanon, a country brought to its knees after years of economic crisis and political instability. Saturday’s events also left Israelis concerned that Iran, which supports Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian militant group in Gaza, could decide to fan the flames. Meanwhile, the West Bank is rife with tension as it suffers its worst cycle of violence since the end of the Second Palestinian Intifada in 2005. Israel carries out raids virtually every day in occupied territory.

Rarely in recent years has the situation seemed so explosive.

“This is definitely a critical moment and no matter what the scenario is, Israel will have a very bad outcome,” said Avi Melamed, an Israeli intelligence analyst.