Armed Conflict

The Lawfare Podcast: Hamas’s Attack on Israel and What Comes Next

Scott R. Anderson, Natan Sachs, Daniel Byman, Ghaith al-Omari, Benjamin Wittes
Wednesday, October 11, 2023, 8:00 AM
 What may the recent attacks on Israel mean for the region and the broader world?

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

This past Saturday, the terrorist group Hamas launched an unprecedented raid from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel that left more than 1000 people – most of them Israeli civilians, many of them women, children, and the elderly – brutally murdered. Dozens more were taken as hostages back into Gaza. A shocked Israel has in turn responded with missile attacks into Gaza that have killed more than 800 Palestinians there, and is planning a broader offensive there. And as people search for more information on what’s transpired, there are concerns that events may yet spiral out into a broader regional war – one that, among other consequences, might derail efforts at normalization in the Israeli-Saudi relationship that have been a major focus of the United States in recent weeks.

To discuss these tragic events and their potentially seismic consequences, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott Anderson sat down with a panel of leading experts: Natan Sachs, Fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of our Center for Middle East Policy; Dan Byman, from the Center for Strategic & International Studies as well as Lawfare’s foreign policy editor; Ghaith al-Omeri of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and Lawfare’s own Editor-In-Chief Benjamin Wittes. They discussed the ripple effects the attack is having throughout the region, the role that Iran and other actors may have played, and what it may yet mean for the region and the broader world.

Please note that this episode contains content that some people may find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised.


Topics:
Scott R. Anderson is a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a Senior Fellow in the National Security Law Program at Columbia Law School. He previously served as an Attorney-Adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. Department of State and as the legal advisor for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.
Natan Sachs is a fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. His work focuses on Israeli foreign policy, domestic politics, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and U.S.-Israeli relations. He is currently writing a book on Israeli grand strategy and its domestic origins.
Daniel Byman is a professor at Georgetown University, Lawfare's Foreign Policy Essay editor, and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.
Ghaith al-Omari is a senior fellow in The Washington Institute's Irwin Levy Family Program on the U.S.-Israel Strategic Relationship and the former executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine.
Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books.

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