So they literally have had no opportunity to choose their leadership. The median person is 18 years old, which means the last time there was a Palestinian election, most people in Gaza weren’t even born. The average person in Gaza is 18 years old. It is, and they like to say that they are an elected government, which is narrowly true, but again, the last election, the last parliamentary election, was in 2006. What has happened is between Hamas and Israel, but Hamas is only part of the picture when it comes to representation of the people who are within Gaza, right? I do want to note something else here, which is that Hamas does not represent all Palestinians. So, you combine an army that is focused elsewhere with a cabinet that is very inexperienced on these matters, and I think that that goes some way towards explaining how Israel was caught so unaware by this. The minister in charge of the police, Itamar Ben-Gvir, is a right-wing ideologue who has no background at all in security. This is also a government where, you look at some of the ministers in this government, they have no experience in security matters. And so there’s been much more concern about the West Bank than about Gaza.

First, the Israeli army, the Israeli security services-they’ve really been focused on the West Bank, not Gaza, in recent months, because this government, through planned expansion of Israeli settlements and other actions, has pushed tensions to a boil in the West Bank. We don’t know why it happened, and I think it will be months before we know, but one thing that I’ve heard from a number of Israelis is that it has something to do with this far-right government.

It is, and we don’t know exactly what happened, this intelligence failure that everyone has talked about. And of course, at the same time, Israel has moved to the far right, and it’s in a strange political situation as well.

Stuck with you