Law, Power, and Justice

www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/world/middleeast/hamas-israel-gaza-war.html

Hamas leaders in Gaza were flooded with images of Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, Jews openly praying at a contested site customarily reserved for Muslims, and the Israeli police storming the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a touchstone for Palestinian claims to the holy city. The prospect of Israel’s normalizing ties with Saudi Arabia, long a deep-pocketed patron of the Palestinian cause, appeared closer than ever.

Mr. Sinwar took the helm of Hamas in Gaza in 2017. A tough, unsmiling man with closely cropped white hair and a trim beard, he hailed from the first generation of Hamas, an armed group founded during the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in the late 1980s and ultimately classified as a terrorist organization by the United States and many other nations.

In 2011, Mr. Sinwar was released in a prisoner swap that Hamas took as a signature lesson: Israel was willing to pay a high price for its captives.

Many in Israel’s security establishment also came to believe that its complex border defenses to shoot down rockets and prevent infiltrations from Gaza were enough to keep Hamas contained.