Your Weekend Reading: ‘Dark Days Lie Ahead’ After a Week of War

Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas after the militant group’s surprise incursion and brutal killing of at least 1,300 people last weekend—mostly civilians—is entering a new phase, with reports that Israeli soldiers have already entered Gaza ahead of the expected invasion. “Every Hamas terrorist is a dead man,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed as the United Nations said Israel had ordered the evacuation of civilians from northern Gaza–some 1.1 million people. But to where? The small, densely populated coastal strip has long been blockaded by Israel and Egypt, and Gaza authorities say some 1,500 Palestinians have already been killed by Israeli bombing—numbers that are sure to rise in the coming days. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to the region, promising that the US “has Israel’s back” as it began transferring missiles for the Iron Dome air-defense system. Across the Middle East, tens of thousands of people protested Israel’s response to the attack as New York, London and other cities braced for mass demonstrations this weekend in support of the Palestinians.

In Israel’s north, worries grew that a new front could be opened by Hezbollah, a longtime enemy of Tel Aviv and “wildcard” that has said it was “fully prepared” for a fight, though the US determined earlier this year that the likelihood of such a conflict is low. Michael R. Bloomberg writes in Bloomberg Opinion that “dark days lie ahead” and that a “mounting civilian death toll in Gaza will only serve Hamas’s interests.” Amid the spike in carnage an invasion may bring, a well of pressing questions remain: How will the 100 or so hostages Hamas holds inside Gaza shape Israeli strategy? Why did Hamas act now and with such shocking violence? Israel has been working in recent years to partner with Arab countries, mostly recently Saudi Arabia, with both sides largely leaving Palestinians out of the equation. If the goal was to derail that effort, it seems to have succeeded for now. “Israel can’t be secure unless it first crushes Hamas as a military threat, and then creates a clear path toward a political settlement that answers to Palestinian, as well as Israeli, interests,” Marc Champion writes in Bloomberg Opinion. How Israel treats Palestinian civilians in the coming days, he writes, “will play a big role in deciding whether that messy, less violent future is possible.”