Before Saturday's attacks, Israel’s civilian population had remained untouched by warfare. Read more at straitstimes.com.
LONDON – Fifty years almost to the day since Israel came under a surprise attack from Egypt and Syria, the Jewish state is yet again embroiled in a new and unexpected war.
Since Israel’s founding, the guiding principle of its defence strategy has been that, because the country is relatively small and most of its population live in a narrow strip on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, everything must be done to keep wars away from Israeli towns and villages. Until now, this effort had also failed; literally tens of thousands of missiles and projectiles were fired at Israel’s cities, but a web of sophisticated defences – including the various Iron Dome systems – ensured that only a tiny number of Israeli civilians perished in such attacks.
Israeli social media is full of phone recordings of civilians desperately begging the military for rescue and video clips of civilians running for their lives. Israel prides itself on sparing no effort to rescue its captured soldiers and civilians – it even traded Palestinian prisoners in return for the remains of an Israeli soldier killed.
Heavy bulldozers operated by Hamas were pre-positioned to punch through the high fence separating Gaza from Israel, and hundreds of Hamas fighters were trained for months for this operation. Yet most Israeli troops remained deployed elsewhere rather than near Gaza.
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