Published
Video duration:
11 mins
What is Hamas? Why did Hamas act on that date? How long can the conflict last? David Rigoulet-Roze, researcher at IRIS, returns to the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7 by answering 11 questions.
“What happened is completely unprecedented. It’s a bit like 9/11 for Israel”. David Rigoulet-Roze is a researcher at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (IRIS). For Brut, he returns to the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. He describes this attack as unprecedented “because until now, Hamas had never engaged in a global confrontation, taking the risk of a massive response. There, Hamas engaged in a real offensive, taking the risk that the Gaza Strip would be reinvested by the Israeli army. So it’s assumed. There, we move to a totally different level”.
“We can think that there is a scenario which is pre-existing, which has been put in place, and that is what is very, very worrying”
“The risk is that Hamas accepts the fact that the global confrontation will lead to consequences which go beyond the framework of the Gaza Strip, that this is not reduced to the problem between Hamas and Israel, even if it has expressed in a first sequence in this way, and with the risk of an extension, or even the possibility of multi-front developments” adds the IRIS researcher. According to him, if Hamas acted on that date, it was for several reasons: “in terms of calendar, firstly, it was the painful anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, a Jewish holiday, therefore a supposed relaxation of attention. Furthermore, there had been divisions within Israeli society for several months regarding the question of reform on the Supreme Court which gave rise to heated debates in Israel, with possibly a drop in vigilance externally.”.
The attack was carried out by Hamas, “an Islamist group linked to the Muslim Brotherhood movement” Who “is only present in the Gaza Strip”. The researcher indicates that “Hezbollah congratulated, welcomed the Hamas offensive and we can think that there are geopolitical synergies in any case. But beyond that, we can think that there is a scenario which is pre-existing, which has been put in place, and this is what is very, very worrying because it is the possibility of an escalatory logic in sequence terms. Hamas knows very well that it will not be abandoned, quote, by its supporters”.