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On 7 October 2023, Palestinian militants led by Hamas launched a complex coordinated attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip, triggering an Israeli ground invasion combined with an aerial bombing campaign. The Hamas fighters killed around 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages, while the death toll from Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip exceeded 31,600 in mid-March 2024. The Hamas attack not only shocked the whole world but also caught most people by surprise. Probably only a few could have imagined that the Palestinian organisation that controls the Gaza Strip could carry out such an attack on Israel. Following 7 October, several questions arose. Why Israeli intelligence could not predict the attack, and why did security and defence forces not react in time? The Israeli Government promised a full investigation once the Gaza ground offensive launched in response to the attack was over. But even without knowing more details of the events, we might still be able to provide a preliminary assessment of the surrounding Israeli intelligence failures based on the reports and accounts made public in the international media. Three months after the attack, the publicly available information showed that the Israel Defense Forces were unprepared and there was no battle plan in place in case Hamas militants broke out of the Gaza Strip with large forces. Clarifying what happened will be crucial not only to learn from the mistakes, but also because other actors or adversaries can learn from Hamas and copy its tactics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Libya has sunk into chaos since Muammar Gaddaft was deposed by a Westernted military intervention in 2011. Since then, the Libyan crisis has escalated into an internationalised armed conflict, and a major power struggle between Turkey, Qatar, Italy, and Russia, Egypt, France, and the United Arab Emirates. In the last few years, General Khalifa Haftar has become Libya's most prominent military commander, who is now ruling the eastern part of the country, as the head of the Libyan National Army. His military offensive, launched in April 2019, to capture the capital Tripoli forced Turkey to help the UN-backed Government of National Accord to avoid defeat. But Haftar too received additional military support, especially from Abu Dhabi and Moscow. This escalated the conflict even further, spurring Ankara for another, this time more consequential intervention, which was able to change the local balance of power, so diplomatic efforts and the peace process could get another chance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the onset of the Arab Spring, there has been a growing interest in the changing balance of power of the Middle East. The balance of power theory in global context has been extensively studied. However, little research has been dedicated to the theory's applicability solely at the regional level, especially with the contemporary Middle East in focus, while the region is suffering from armed conflicts involving virtually all the regional states as well as the great powers and many different non-state actors. This paper is an attempt to shed light on the applicability of the balance of power concept and the theory of omnibalancing in relation to the Middle East through reviewing the relevant literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]