A few days before 7 October, the US National Security Adviser said “the Middle East was quieter than it had been for two decades”. That sentence now sounds like a full summary of the American illusion.

Washington was looking at the region from above. Normalisation was moving forward. Israel felt secure. Gaza was besieged but “under control”. The West Bank was being swallowed slowly by settlements. Palestine was no longer treated as the center of the conflict, but as a disturbing file that could be managed with aid, work permits and economic promises.

Then 7th October happened.

It was not only a military operation. It was a political, intelligence and psychological earthquake. It surprised Israel, the United States, Arab governments and much of the international community. Almost everyone believed Gaza had accepted the rules of siege, that Hamas had become used to power, and that Palestinians were tired of resistance.

It was not only a military operation. It was a political, intelligence and psychological earthquake. It surprised Israel, the United States, Arab governments and much of the international community. Almost everyone believed Gaza had accepted the rules of siege, that Hamas had become used to power, and that Palestinians were tired of resistance.

Under that calm surface, something very different was happening.

Hamas carried out a major strategic deception. Israel, which always boasts that its intelligence services see everything, failed to see what was happening inside a small, besieged strip of land.

This tells us something important: arrogance blinds power.

Israel slept on the illusion of total superiority. Before 1973, it trusted the Bar Lev Line. Before 2023, it trusted the wall around Gaza, early-warning systems, the Gaza Division, the Shabak and Mossad. It believed Palestinians were deterred. It believed Gaza was contained. It believed Arab states were busy elsewhere. It believed the normalisation train could run over the Palestinian question without a price.

Netanyahu carried this illusion more than anyone else.

Shortly before 7th October, he stood at the United Nations and presented his map of a “new Middle East”. It was a region built around normalisation, trade corridors and Arab-Israeli integration. But with Palestine pushed to the margins. His message was clear: Israel could normalize with Arab states, bypass the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, manage Gaza, divide Palestinians between Gaza and the West Bank, and continue without paying a political price.

This was not only a personal illusion. Because Netanyahu remained in power for so long, his thinking shaped the Israeli system itself: the media, academia, security institutions, intelligence agencies and military culture. The failure of 7 October was therefore not only an intelligence failure. It was a political and ideological failure. It was the failure of an Israeli worldview that believed the Palestinian question could be weakened, fragmented and then ignored.

This is why Netanyahu now tries to avoid serious accountability. He wants to blame the army, military intelligence, the Shabak, the opposition, Oslo, and even to blame Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin who passed away many years ago. He wants everyone to be responsible except himself. But the truth is simple: the political strategy that helped create this moment was his strategy.

7th October did not come from nowhere. It came after years of siege on Gaza, repeated wars, a dead political horizon,........

© Middle East Monitor