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Let's not pretend that this isn't a huge popularity boost for Netanyahu and the Israeli right. Now they have an excuse for years of military operations and populist propaganda. Israel has a military industrial complex that not even Iran can match. A plausible theory is that they just let it happen. Since they feel like it gives them carte blanche for unlimited retaliation. I fear we will see a Palestinian genocide in this decade.

The conspiratorial me is having a hard time believing that Israel's intelligence was kind of unaware that something big was brewing up.

In times like this people are getting united in their grief. Like this Netanyahu would get a green card to conduct a large scale military operation in Gaza, which of course would lead to even more civilian casualties and suffering, he will probably introduce some new legislation, giving him even greater rights to govern and escape justice and probably introducing even more restrictions in the area, which logically would only increase the tension.

I highly doubt that anything good will come out of this situation and that's really sad.

I doubt they understood the scale, but I suspect that Netanyahu's government was more than happy to plan to let Hamas strike first to kick-start the war the current administration has been trying to provoke since at least May.

I don’t think the conspiracy theory that they had advance knowledge is true, if only because the immediate response was so chaotic. If they knew, they’d have at least had a plan to respond.

But one thing that’s not a conspiracy is that Netanyahu had a policy to strengthen Hamas as part of a cynical strategy to kill off the 2 state solution. Basically, undermine the more moderate Palestinian Authority by allowing Hamas to get more organized, rule Gaza without fresh elections, let Hamas-linked groups distribute aid, etc.

So, while I don’t think they knew about the current attacks, I do think they knew an attack would eventually, inevitably come and they thought it’d be worth it to have Hamas as a boogeyman.

This just further raises questions on whether Netanyahu was actually unaware or if this attack was allowed to happen to provide cover for his corruption charges.

With so many different blatantly apparent elements and the well known past efforts by the IDF and Israeli intelligence to prevent things like this, such a massive buildup toward the attack in plain sight seems impossible to have been missed.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The Palestinian militant group Hamas built a mock Israeli town in Gaza and practiced attacking in plain sight — but Israel didn't react, Reuters reported on Sunday.

The attack followed a careful campaign of deception by Hamas that ensured Israel was caught off guard over the weekend, an unnamed source, with connections to the group, told Reuters.

Despite convincing Israel that they had no interest in war, Hamas militants were practicing for the offensive in plain sight by setting up a mock Israeli settlement in Gaza to train its fighters.

"Israel surely saw [the videos], but they were convinced that Hamas wasn't keen on getting into a confrontation," the source told Reuters.

In the years leading up to the attack, Hamas fighters wanted to give the impression that they were war-weary and more concerned about ensuring that workers in Gaza had access to jobs in Israel.

Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday said he had ordered a "complete siege" on the Gaza Strip: "No electricity, no food, no fuel."

The original article contains 411 words, the summary contains 170 words. Saved 59%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Maybe they should've built a mock Israeli town, pretended it was a real one, and practiced actually governing it.

How hard you gotta train to kill unarmed festival goers/dancers?