Wars unite nations. The shock and horror of the Hamas attacks on Israel have brought a deeply divided country together. It is possible that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, may now form a national unity government.Israeli unity will last a while because this crisis is very far from over. The fate of the hostages inside Gaza, including children and old people, will continue to torment Israel. The government also faces the risk of new fronts opening in the occupied West Bank or on the border with Lebanon. But, fairly soon, Israel will be plunged into a divisive political argument about what went wrong. Two failures will have to be addressed. The first is an intelligence and security failure. The second is strategic.
Israel has long taken pride in its intelligence services. It was generally assumed that nothing much could happen in Gaza without Israel knowing about it. But Hamas was able to plan and execute a complex and multipronged attack and storm across a border that the Israelis thought was secure. In doing so, they carried out the most deadly attacks inside Israel since the foundation of the state in 1948.
Both the right and the centre are primed to blame each other for the intelligence and security failure. (The left barely exists anymore.) As prime minister, Netanyahu is the natural person to blame for what has happened.