Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty
SDEROT—The roads from Jerusalem to the Gaza border, about an hour and a half drive, were near deserted as the Israeli war with Hamas entered its fifth day. Israel is still recovering bodies from around the 25 mile perimeter of the Gaza Strip and counting more than 1,200 killed in a massive attack on October 7. However, the country now faces the unwelcome prospect of a two-front war. This was driven home to people on Wednesday evening, as sirens sounded throughout northern Israel.
The Israel Defense Forces ultimately said that the sirens were a malfunction. Nevertheless tens of thousands of people in communities near the Lebanon border had been sent scrambling for shelters and safe rooms. “Following the initial report regarding a suspected infiltration from Lebanon into Israeli air space, all civilians in the areas where sirens were sounded are asked to enter shelters and stay in them until further notice,” the IDF said. Residents in the north, speaking to Israeli television soon after the alert, said that they lack enough shelters and the shelters are sometimes far apart.
Meanwhile in southern Israel, near Sderot, IDF soldiers said they identified “a number of vehicles with terrorists in an area adjacent to Kibbutz Nir Am. An IDF tank responded by firing toward them.” This is now the situation Israel faces. Israel has trained for a multi-front war for many years. It has also sought to train to make its army more efficient, using more technology and precision munitions, as well as artificial intelligence. However, the last five days have shaken confidence in these systems. Hamas used numerous small drones to neutralize observation sites around the Gaza border, rendering the IDF blind. Then fighters poured through, striking 29 locations in the fence. Israel had invested a billion dollars in a “smart” fence around the Gaza border. However, like the Maginot line, it turned out that massive investment could not always stop a determined enemy.