Channel 13 News Middle East commentator Zvi Yehezkeli tells Arutz Sheva - Israel National News the answer to the question plaguing the Israeli public - how did the Hamas invasion happen?
"We failed to understand the Middle East," Zvi says. "We thought concessions would make Hamas be silent. We underestimated them and thought they wouldn't do such a thing. They told the world what they would do and practiced it, and we didn't notice. The writing was on the wall for those who follow Arabic media. We are thinking like the West, that everyone was friends, that 'history' is over. Hey, guys - not in the Middle East."
Zvi says he was not surprised by the violence but by the success it had. "They broke through all the walls, the fences, the cameras, the underground projects, the biggest security project in Israel, in an hour. That they were cruel, we knew, but we didn't think they could get through all that in less than an hour."
Even the most explicit warnings, Zvi says, went ignored. "I can show you films where they say they're going to do it -'We're going to invade your villages, your lands, we're going to slaughter your kids'. We thought they were like us and would love us if we gave them money and work. The first rule of Hamas is Jihad, and they practice it in many ways. This is the main Western thinking, and it doesn't work in the Middle East - not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, and not with Hamas."
"When I covered the 2002 attack on the Park Hotel in Netanya, when a suicide bomber blew himself up and killed thirty Israelis, Israeli tanks invaded Judea and Samaria and jailed Arafat. I sat with him and asked, 'Why would you do such a thing?' He told me, 'It's not about land, it's about justice. I will always fight you because I don't believe in your justice. Your agreements are to get me to settle down - mine are, so you won't be here in twenty years."
The situation isn't hopeless, though - Zvi says Israel can win. "If you know your goal is that Hamas will not be able to raise weapons in the name of Jihad, we can do it. If we go to sleep as we did in 2006 with Hezbollah, we will suffer years later. If we don't do it now, it will be again with Hamas in Gaza, in the north with Hezbollah, and in Judea and Samaria inside of Israel."