In Israel, this attack provoked a tsunami of anger, strident calls for revenge, demands for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and a national consensus in support of the total eradication of Hamas. The result has been the longest, deadliest and most ruinous war in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Hamas is a social movement and political organisation with a military wing, al-Qassam Brigades. The military wing was proscribed by the British government as a terrorist organisation in March 2001, and in November 2021, former Home Secretary Priti Patel added the political organisation to the list of proscribed groups.
This decision marked an abrupt reversal of the government’s previous policy, which made a clear distinction between Hamas’s political and military wings.
Patel, a staunch supporter of Israel, argued, unconvincingly in my opinion, that the distinction between the two wings was no longer tenable. For its part, Israel has always denied that there is any difference between the two wings.