Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad made a serious miscalculation. Like their predecessors, they became accustomed to seeing pinpoint responses, if any. Like their predecessors, they crossed a red line, and they will see Israel, the "sleeping giant," awaken in full force in the coming days.
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The terrorists in Gaza mistakenly thought they had studied us closely during four rounds of fighting with Israel in 2012, 2014, 2008, and 2021. They were familiar with a country that was willing to absorb hundreds, if not thousands, of missiles and mortar shells. A country that returns fire mainly from the skies, and that is not willing to bring ground forces into the heart of Gaza, but only to the border areas. They were familiar with an Israel that was willing to pay a Qatari fortune to buy quiet in Gaza for a few years. They were familiar with an Israel that is willing to release more than a thousand terrorists from Israeli prisons in exchange for one kidnapped IDF soldier and that will even negotiate for the return of the bodies of soldiers killed in Gaza. They knew Israel well, or so they thought. They knew Israel, but this time they may have miscalculated and fallen into the same misconception our enemies fell into in the past.
This is what happened to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in May 1967 during the Six-Day War. Nasser expelled the United Nations forces from Sinai and saw that Israel did nothing in response. Nasser brought the Egyptian army into the Sinai Peninsula, and once again saw that Israel did nothing. Convinced that Israel would remain passive as in the past, Nasser escalated and closed the Straits of Tiran, and forged strategic anti-Israel alliances with Jordan and Syria. In retrospect, it turned out that the Egyptian leader had gone one step too far. Finally, on the morning of June 5, he woke up to the news that the Israeli Air Force had destroyed almost all of Egypt's planes. The Syrians miscalculated too. In five out of the six days of that war, the Syrians rained thousands of shells on Israeli settlements in the Galilee and brought upon themselves an Israeli counterattack that drove them out of the Golan Heights.
Yasser Arafat also miscalculated. In October 2000, after rejecting then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's proposal for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza, and half of Jerusalem, Arafat launched the Second Intifada. He gave the green light to Palestinian suicide bombers to murder hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians. For a year-and-a-half, Israel held back and did not return fire in any significant way – until the moment when the horrific Passover attack took place at the Park Hotel in Netanya, in which a suicide bomber murdered 30 Israeli civilians. Arafat, like Nasser before him, went one step too far, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's response in the form of Operation Defensive Shield was not long in coming.
"We have awakened a sleeping giant," said Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of the Japanese attack on the US Navy at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Israel, like the United States on the eve of World War II, is a sleeping giant. It is not easy to awaken us, but when we wake up, our power and strength are tremendous. In committing the brutal and cruel attack on the residents of southern Israel, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad repeated the mistake made by Nasser and Arafat – they went one step too far. They became accustomed to the sleeping Israeli giant, and now they will have to deal with the awake giant in its full force. The people of Israel are strong and unified, and, above all, they are aware and alert to their mission to defend themselves and Israel's right to exist.
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