On October 7, 2023, Hamas’s armed wing launched the unprecedented Al-Aqsa Flood attack against Israel — a shock offensive that instantly reshaped the Middle East’s crisis dynamics. The raid, which broke out of the long-besieged Gaza Strip into Israeli territory, shattered assumptions, triggering Israel’s fiercest ever assault on Gaza and fundamentally altering Israeli-Palestinian realities forever.
Yet many who uphold the right of armed resistance against occupation have questioned the timing of this operation. In the aftermath, Israel’s onslaught razed much of Gaza, killing thousands of civilians in what many international experts and institutions have described as war crimes and acts of genocide. and Hamas’s hoped-for strategic gains failed to materialize. While some argue that such a move was inevitable, Hamas’s decision reflected a desperate strategic gamble under the pressure of prolonged Israeli siege and occupation in choosing that moment, as three key dynamics show.
Local Palestinian dynamics
Hamas appeared to bank on a groundswell of rebellion across the Palestinian territories — that an attack from Gaza would spark parallel upheaval in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and even among Palestinian citizens of Israel. In practice, that “simultaneous uprising” never materialized. Instead, Israel swiftly tightened its grip on the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, Hamas’s political rival, distanced itself from the attack, and any grassroots protests were met with overwhelming force, particularly in cities like Jenin and Hebron.
Israeli forces, emboldened by the war atmosphere, carried out the most intense West Bank crackdown in decades, including frequent raids into cities and refugee camps and a sharp escalation of settler violence. According to the UN and Palestinian health officials, Israeli troops or settlers have killed over 900 West Bank Palestinians since October 7, violence at a scale not seen since the Second Intifada. This included deadly new tactics, such as the first aerial strikes in the West Bank in 20 years and near-daily army attacks.
Rather than stretching Israel’s forces across two fronts, Hamas’s attack left the West Bank populace isolated and suffering historic repression. Far from rallying to Hamas’s side, the local dynamics turned grimly against Palestinian interests: Israel’s security apparatus “Gazafied” the West Bank with military closures and mass arrests, while the world’s attention remained fixated on Gaza’s plight. In short, Hamas misjudged the capacity for a synchronized revolt — October 7 found Palestinians internally fractured and vulnerable, not primed for a united uprising.
This miscalculation even extended to Israel’s own society. Prior to October, Israel had been wracked by internal divisions with mass protests over Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul. Hamas may have assumed Israel was politically weakened. Instead, the attack produced a “rally around the flag” effect.
Within days, bitter political rivals united in an emergency war cabinet; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz formed a wartime unity government on October 11, 2023. The usual fractures in Israeli politics closed overnight. In effect, Hamas’s timing reversed any advantage from Israel’s domestic discord — it prompted Israel’s most cohesive and rapid mobilization in years.
Hamas’s secret planning
If the local Palestinian reaction was weaker than Hamas anticipated, one reason lies in how the operation was planned. Ultra-secrecy was Hamas’s priority in the run-up to October 7. For years, a small coterie led by Yahya Sinwar (Hamas’s ex-Gaza chief) and Mohammed Deif (One Hamas’s military leaders for over 20 years) plotted the assault in a strict, compartmentalized fashion. This clandestine approach achieved tactical surprise — Israel’s vaunted intelligence was indeed blindsided — but it came at the cost of broader coordination.
Hamas did not alert its own allies or many within its ranks. Reports indicate that Hamas’s political leadership and external allies like Iran and Hezbollah were largely kept out of operational details. While some Iranian and Hezbollah officials may have been aware that Hamas was preparing some form of escalation, they were reportedly not briefed on the scale or timing of the October 7 assault. Initial US intelligence assessments likewise found that some senior Iranian leaders were “surprised” by Hamas’s unprecedented attack. In essence, Hamas went into this major war largely alone, having isolated itself in pursuit of maximum operational security.
This lack of coordination had predictable consequences. Within Gaza, other factions such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad did join the fighting, but the absence of synchronization with the West Bank or with Hezbollah (on Israel’s northern border) meant Hamas forwent opportunities that might have stretched Israel’s defenses.
Hamas hoped for a cascading multi-front war — envisioning unrest in the West Bank and possibly a heavier Hezbollah engagement — but none of that came to fruition. By not notifying fighters in the West Bank ahead of time, Hamas ensured operational secrecy but lost a chance to ignite parallel action.
Internally, this bold operation also laid bare ideological rifts within Hamas. The timing and scale of the attack were decided by the Gaza-based leadership without broad consultation, reflecting a more maximalist line. It ran counter to the more measured approach that Hamas’s political bureau (in exile) had signaled in recent years (for instance, via a 2017 political document accepting a Palestinian state on 1967 borders).
In launching the October 7 assault unilaterally, Hamas’s hardliners sidelined any dissenting voices — but they also deprived themselves of consensus. The result was a spectacular military surprise achieved by a “narrow circle” of plotters, but little ability to capitalize on it politically. In strategic terms, Hamas faced the war largely alone — not only because of its operational choices, but because regional and international actors have consistently failed to provide meaningful support for Palestinian self-determination.
Regional realities
Hamas also failed to account for the regional geopolitical timing. The attack was presumably aimed at upending a burgeoning Israel-Sunni Arab rapprochement — notably, it came as Israel and Saudi Arabia were inching toward a historic normalization deal. Indeed, in the immediate aftermath, Riyadh did pause its US-brokered talks with Israel and instead opened communications with Iran.
On the surface, Hamas achieved one goal: the Saudi–Israeli normalization was put “on ice” and the issue of Palestinian statehood was thrust back onto the agenda of Arab states. However, this regional fallout was not a strategic gain for Hamas. Crucially, the Middle East of 2023 lacked any robust anti-Israel alliance or “resistance axis” willing to intervene on Gaza’s behalf.
The trend before October 7 was one of Arab states prioritizing their own detentes and interests — not preparing a joint front against Israel. Countries like Turkey, Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia issued condemnations of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and rallied humanitarian aid, but none moved to confront Israel militarily.
Even Iran, despite its fiery rhetoric, calibrated its actions to avoid direct war till April 2025. Tehran’s leaders were caught off guard by Hamas’s operation and, rather than launching into the fray, they worked to prevent escalation — for instance, Iran’s President and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince held their first-ever call to contain the crisis and avoid a regional war. This underscores that Hamas struck at a time when the region’s power centers were in a normalization mindset, not a war footing against Israel.
The limitations of Hamas’s regional support were most evident on Israel’s northern border. Fears of a full-scale second front with Hezbollah proved unfounded. While Hezbollah did exchange fire with Israeli forces in the weeks after October 7, it pointedly restricted its engagement to a low-intensity level — targeting military outposts near the border but avoiding major operations that would invite all-out war.
Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s ex-leader, ultimately chose caution: Lebanon’s dire domestic situation and the risk of massive Israeli retaliation made a full entry into the war unlikely. Hamas had counted on more. Its officials publicly urged allied groups to do more — as one Hamas leader, Ghazi Hamad, said in late October, “We appreciate [Hezbollah’s actions] … But we need more … We expect more”.
Those pleas fell on deaf ears. Hezbollah and Iran clearly calculated that expanding the war was not in their interest, despite their rhetorical support for Palestine. In the end, Hamas’s timing couldn’t have been worse regionally: the attack came when Arab states were exploring peace deals and rivals were reconciling, and when even the “Axis of Resistance” preferred a limited show of support or strategic abstention over the risks of regional conflagration.
Hamas hoped to break the momentum of Arab–Israeli normalization, and while it did stall it temporarily, it had no regional alliance to replace that momentum with. Instead, the war solidified a US-led regional security stance (US military assets surged to the Eastern Mediterranean) and left Israel’s neighbors wary of entanglement, which only heightened Israel’s freedom of action in Gaza.
A high-price gambit with little strategic payoff
Analyzing three key layers — local, intra-Palestinian and regional — a pattern emerges: every contextual window was closed in October 2023. Hamas chose to strike when the Palestinians were internally divided and easily suppressed outside Gaza; when Hamas’s own planning isolation undermined broader coordination; when the regional geopolitical climate favored rapprochement over resistance; and when global powers were poised to side with Israel instantly.
This convergence of unfavorable factors made October 7 a strategic blunder despite its initial tactical success. Instead of exploiting adversary weaknesses, Hamas’s attack ended up amplifying the asymmetry of power it faced. Israel seized on the attack as a pretext to intensify its long-standing campaign of collective punishment and mass violence in Gaza, facing little international restraint.
Yet the trajectory of the war eventually revealed the limits of Israel’s coercive power. By the time the ceasefire was reached on October 9, 2025, Israel’s prolonged campaign had failed to achieve its core strategic objectives, undermining its image as an actor capable of imposing military solutions. The war reinforced Israel’s identity as a settler-colonial regime systematically violating international law with impunity — a perception that may carry lasting political costs if it once again violates the ceasefire.
To be sure, from Hamas’s perspective, the attack was born of desperation. Years of blockade, stalled diplomacy, expanding Israeli settlements and repeated provocations had convinced Hamas that no better moment was coming. Hamas leaders have argued that they had no other options and understood the grievous costs but were willing to pay the price to jolt the status quo. They point out that the operation did succeed in returning the Palestinian cause to global attention and momentarily disrupted Israel’s regional integration.
Such assertions underscore a grim truth: for Hamas and many Palestinians, any moment to challenge a decades-long occupation would carry terrible risks, and waiting might only mean enduring more oppression. In that sense, some contend that Al-Aqsa Flood was a necessary gambit, mistimed or not, to remind the world of Palestine’s unresolved plight.
Yet acknowledging that desperation does not negate the strategic reality. The outcome of October 7 speaks for itself. By striking when it did, Hamas triggered a response that has devastated Gaza and dramatically weakened Palestinian positions, with no equivalent gain in sight. Different timing or better coordination might have produced a different balance — for example, had regional conditions been more favorable or international opinion less one-sided, Hamas might have retained more leverage post-attack.
[Casey Herrmann edited this piece]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
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