From the Editors
Whether Hamas will pursue external operations in Europe—and potentially elsewhere—is the subject of our cover article this month. In it, Matthew Levitt outlines several recent criminal cases in Germany and Denmark that “reveal that Hamas set in motion contingency planning for possible attacks in Europe several years before the October 7 massacre, including stashing small arms in weapons caches in multiple European countries.” “Today,” Levitt writes, “European and Israeli officials fear that Hamas has taken the decision to go global and carry out plots abroad, marking a significant departure from the group’s prior modus operandi.”
In our Foxhole interview, Zohar Palti, former director of the Policy & Political-Military Bureau in Israel’s Ministry of Defense, discusses the terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, and lessons learned over the past two years. He observes: “The country’s regional position, especially following the heavy blow we delivered to Hezbollah and following the successful 12-day campaign targeting the nuclear and ballistic missile program in Iran, is without a doubt significantly better than on October 6, 2023. But we should ask ourselves whether we really ‘needed’ an October 7 in order to arrive at this new and improved strategic state.”
Magnus Ranstorp outlines how Hamas has operated, fought, and governed—from its origins to the present. Based on the author’s first-hand interviews with senior Hamas leaders, the article “details the ideology, organizational architecture, and decision-making that drive both the dawa apparatus and the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades,” and importantly, “it assesses Hamas’ degraded yet durable capabilities, internal factional dynamics, and implications for Gaza’s ‘day after.’”
Caroline Rose provides an in-depth analysis of how post-Assad Syria is contending with the remnants of the country’s captagon drug trade. She analyzes how the recent “dismantling of regime-era infrastructures has created opportunities for a constellation of non-state actors—some remnants of the former order and others newly emergent—to exploit the evolving market, leading to both the diffusion of production and the relocation of trafficking activities into contested areas.”
On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Paris terrorist attacks, Alexandre Rodde examines the persistence of the threat of complex coordinated terrorist attacks (CCTA). He outlines “the evolution of the Western law enforcement response while facing such attacks, and how the 2008 Mumbai attacks and the 2015 Paris attacks led to operational and tactical evolutions in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.” This particular modus operandi, he warns, “requires a strong anticipation effort by law enforcement agencies in order to prepare for a potential return of CCTA in the West.”
Don Rassler and Kristina Hummel, Editors-in-Chief
